Everything we want in this world seems to come with a time stamp. I can sit and write today for 30 minutes. I can meet for lunch for 45. The drive to and from work takes 15. I’ll publish this article in the next day or two. I’ll publish my book in the next 2–5 years. I’ll move abroad in the next 10.
With COVID, everyone seems to be waiting for things to get ‘back to normal.’ The lack of a time stamp feels unbearable to some who are waiting for jobs to open up again, waiting for their savings to run out, waiting for rent to be due, waiting for the day they can take their kids back to school.
Certainly, waiting can be unbearable, especially when we think of it as such. Waiting. While our normalcy has been on pause (or forever changed), our lives continue. We experience joys and sadness, failures and triumphs. Kids are still graduating from school. People are still starting businesses. Getting married. Having kids. Breaking up. Starting over.
To dedicate these moments to the void of a waiting room is to miss life itself.
I read an article this morning about how parents should be mindful of how they frame this time period to their kids, especially teens who are forming crucial skills related to resilience and conflict. This time they have not been in school is not, as the article puts it, a “lost year,” but a different sort of experience. Despite the upset of normalcy, they are still growing, still learning, and will have been affected by this year one way or another. It is not a missing gap in anyone’s life. It is perhaps one of the most important years of our lives.
Because while we can make “progress” toward our life goals any year, there is a different sort of living that has happened in the past year. One that takes place individually.
Many of us have undergone a quiet transformation about the way we think of ourselves, our needs, and finding true joy in the little things. No one has had a great experience; I don’t want to invalidate anyone’s struggles. But even though many of us have yet to realize it, we have learned about ourselves. For me, that is realizing the most important people in my life and finding my worth in something that is not seen as ‘work.’ (I’m talking about writing if you don’t know.) How long would I have waited, under normal conditions, to allow myself the time to immerse myself in my work?
Other people may have learned something about their nature — how they deal with remote work, or maybe how much social time they need. Maybe you realized how important your yoga classes were to you. Or how important routine is to your mental health. All of these, good or bad, are not experiences to be erased. They are a testament to your strength and ability to adapt. We’re all learning a bit about that.
So, while you’re waiting for your job to return, to hug your grandparents again, to date again, to have a barbecue with friends, to your life to get back to the way it was, take time to appreciate the lessons learned and resilience gained. Take solace in knowing this moment matters. Enjoy the happy moments as fully as you would pre-COVID. Its presence does not diminish us. We will not shut away this chapter of our lives in a drawer because it was hard. We will revisit it time and again, wiser, more appreciative, and cherish those moments in spite of however the world thinks you should feel about it.
This, too, is part of your life.
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