Amidst Abrupt Change

Hi, friends 🙂 How are you doing?

We find ourselves in a unique time. The coronavirus has changed many, many things about life as we know it. My hope is that this too shall pass, but when that will be remains a mystery.

It was indicated that 2020 would be the year of “clear vision” and a spiritual awakening. In January that “clear vision” sentiment felt positive, albeit a little vague. But already in just three months, here we are amidst a grim awakening of all sorts: spiritual, global, personal.

The rapidly evolving circumstances, the fact that each day the situation worsens for everyone everywhere, the truth that we are all in this, affected by it in some way, is very hard to handle. My traffic-less commute, which turned into a cancelled commute, is not normal. The concern that toilet paper will run out is not normal. The downtown ghost town I see is not normal. It leaves me with a heavy heart. I miss my normal life. 

For once, this heartache is felt around the globe. We don’t get to shake our heads and sigh and say, “That is so terrible that happened over there; thank God we’re safe here.” No one gets to say that right now about the coronavirus. 

These weird days illustrate the fragility of life. Everything we have built can change instantly; any sense of normal that once existed was simply an illusion. It’s tough to acknowledge the fragility of “normal,” of how we work so hard to place systems into our daily life, only to see them changed without our consult. When it comes to negative changes in our circumstances, health, and well-being people will say, “I didn’t ask for this to happen, this is so unfair!” To which I just want to yell, “Of course not!!! Who would ask for this?!” There is enough hardship within “normal” that I sincerely doubt we’re all just hoping the sky will fall. The implication is that we believe bad or hard things won’t happen to us. We believe that “normal” will never be sabotaged. Sadly, that belief will time and again be proved incorrect.

The unfortunate truth is that shit happens and it is not discriminatory. We are all subject to hardships no matter how hard you try to do well, be well, and live well. The coronavirus is proof of that and serves as a blunt reminder that the bubble in which we tend to live is an illusion. We are all connected. When one thing fails, we all do. 

At the time of this writing the United States is not yet in a full lockdown, but one by one individual states are adopting that policy. Many things have closed for an indefinite period of time. Fun plans for the spring and summer months are up in the air, if not already cancelled. What we took for granted as easily accessible and doable has been put on hold. Right now we are all amidst abrupt change, and the timeline for this change does not have an expiration date. So on top of this change is also uncertainty – our least favorite challenges to face.

For the rest of the time that we face this non-stop change, I implore you to see what you can learn from this. How comfortable can you get with being uncomfortable? How resourceful can you be within each unstable day? Can you manage your fear by focusing instead on doing your best with what you have within each day? How quickly can you adapt to change?

If nothing else, can you learn to take your life one single day, hour, minute at a time?