The Gift of Coronavirus
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The first week of the mandatory stay-at-home order had me panicked: it was an invisible virus, that no one was sure how it was transmitted – whether through air, touch or droplets of saliva; no one knew how long everyone was to stay at home. No one knew how long this was going to last.
The first week’s panic was palpable; and anxiety came out in odd ways. Arguments with my partner for no reason, sitting blankly staring at the wall; the idea that I’d use the extra time to reorganize the entire house… or lose 10 pounds… or write that book that I’d always planned…
Which grew into days where I did nothing at all. And a sleep schedule that became increasingly different than the “normal” work day.
We’re now 7 weeks into the stay-at-home order. It’s a new “normal,” and it occurs to me: there have been some genuine gifts from this pandemic:
– A friend pointed it out to me first: “Mark,” he said, “for the first time in YEARS I actually have the opportunity to connect with my partner. We’ve both been so wrapped up in our careers; we both work long hours at the office, so that I don’t know if I’ve EVER been in around my partner so much. This slowdown has allowed us to connect in ways, and more organically, than we ever have.”
– I was talking with a friend just this morning by Facebook messenger. She asked how things were going. I offered, “I’m truly enjoying the slow down, the slower pace in life. I go to bed when I’m tired, rather than when I ‘have’ to because of work the next morning; I wake up naturally after I’ve had enough sleep… not because an alarm was set because I have to drive an hour through traffic to work. I work when I’m motivated… take a nap when I’m tired, rest when I need rest. The natural pace – rather than constantly being driven by external events – has been a huge blessing.”
I’ll offer that, for me, there’s been another huge gift: I hadn’t realized before how driven I was by imaginary “others.” I imagined what “other” people were doing to grow their businesses; I imagined that “other” people were out doing so much more exciting things than me; I imagined that “others” lived their lives so much more productively and effectively and successfully… than I did.
And so I competed with them.
In my mind.
To my detriment.
When the mandatory stay-at-home order was given it, in my mind, put us all at a level playing base: we ALL were stuck; NO one was going out having fun at exciting events I couldn’t afford or wasn’t invited to (or didn’t have the social confidence to go to ). The vast majority of people were in exactly the same job situation as myself: looking at a -0- paycheck and the possibility of no job at all.
In a weird way, us all being brought down to baseline; us all being stuck in the same place; us all having common anxieties and fears… reaffirmed that I was ok. I was in the same place as everyone else. And I had the same opportunities to do what I needed to do: was I to use the time to develop myself? To look for an income? To improve my life by cleaning or organizing?
And the pace – the fact that I DIDN’T have people calling me at 7:30 in the morning; the fact I WASN’T battling rush hour at 5:30p just to get home; the fact I wasn’t battling for parking at the trail head to hike a crowded trail with fellow weekend warriors… made all the difference.
Instead all the external pressure was replaced with “What do _I_ want to do!? How do _I_ feel!? How do _I_ want to improve my life!?” and all the EXTERNAL should’s and would’s and could’s… were replaced with “What do _I_ want!?”
To be sure, the financial stress has been huge. The worry for my health when venturing out of the house for groceries or pet food is palpable. The moments when I’ve felt alone and isolated have been immensely hard.
Bill Gates said it well when he said, “No one who lives through ‘Pandemic I’ will ever forget it. And it is impossible to overstate the pain that people are feeling now and will continue to feel for years to come.”
But the GIFTS this pandemics have provided have been palpable as well.
I wonder how things will be once we’re through this. I’m a cynic so that I suspect for all those saying, “We’ll never return to ‘normal’ again” or “we will have a new ‘normal,'” I disagree: I believe, as soon as a vaccine is developed or natural immunity increases… that we will return to EXACTLY the same world we had before Covid-19.
But I’m hoping _I_ remember the lessons of this pandemic, and particularly the lessons of the freedom of internal and natural motivation; the rhythms of a day untethered to a million other people all climbing over each other, to succeed and get a head and compete.
_I’m_ hoping I can hold on to the gift of coronavirus.
And you!? What have the gifts of this shut-down been for you!? How is it effecting you? Post below – we, all of us in this community, would like to known.
~ Mark Farmer
Founder, LSE
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