This COVID-19 global pandemic is absolutely horrifying. As of today, the estimate of total number of deaths from the first wave of the pandemic in the United States is around 93,765 and that’s assuming the state issued social distancing continues through April. The estimate on hospital beds and ventilators shortage is staggering, and let’s not even talk about the desperate need for more personal protective equipment (PPE) across the nation. Then, riding off the coattails of the pandemic is the economic downturn as a result of the social distancing mandate, not to mention the mental health impacts to everyone who is now forced into isolation when humans are meant to be social.
It just straight up sucks.
And yet…these past three weeks have been such an unexpected gift for me. The sudden free time I have. The alone time I always said I needed more of now served on a silver platter all day, everyday. The jolt of reality as all of my plans got cancelled and a new normal started to emerge forced me to reevaluate my life, pre-COVID-19. If I was so ecstatic as my plans got cancelled one by one, what was I doing planning to go to all of those events? As I spend more time these days consciously reaching out to my family and good friends, where did I go wrong that this wasn’t something I prioritized before the world went on lockdown? As I finally got adjusted to working from home and realizing I only gained about 30 minutes each day due to a short commute, how is it possible that I’ve gained more than 30 minutes each day to do something that I loved, just because?
The news is horrible, this is true. But what I’ve also found to be true is that I have never felt as present as I do these days. Why? Because it is the only thing within my realm of control right now, and frankly, that has always been the case and always will be the case. I’ve always known that intellectually but only recently have I realized I didn’t quite live it. In my pre-COVID-19 life, everything I did was a step towards some end goal I arbitrarily decided on without ever evaluating if I was enjoying myself or happy during the process. Process? What process? Who cares? Did I achieve the thing? Then once I achieved the thing I was on to the next. But wait a minute – did I even want the thing to begin with? What was I doing? It was like I was a donkey with a carrot constantly dangling in front of my face, except I was also the one holding the carrot.
It’s like this virus hit a pause button on my life and it’s gotten me to reevaluate my priorities, how I viewed my life, and most fascinating thus far is how things that I thought were true were actually not.
For example, I was just talking to a friend about how funny it is that we now rely on technology to stay connected to our friends and family. It wasn’t that long ago there was an argument that technology is the cause of millenials and generation Z being less connected and lonelier as a generation.
A few of my introverted friends have told me they are a lot more social than they thought they were. I’m technically an extrovert but I am really loving this life. Labels played a more significant role in my life than I thought as far as how I thought someone “should” react, myself included. Now I reach out to my friends and check to see if they’re ok, even if they’re introverted and supposedly don’t need as much human interaction.
I used to make a lot more of these funny videos using snapchat filters and such and the past few months I noticed I haven’t. I told myself it was because I didn’t have the mental capacity for creativity since I was so busy doing my various volunteer and community outreach activities and that was ok. My community outreach was my priority for the foreseeable future because it was tangible and had a very clear impact whereas my goofy side and creativity was purely for me. The former was clearly more important. If it isn’t clear yet, I am very much a creature of doing vs being, something I did not realize mattered until the ‘rona showed me differently. I now know this prioritization was not ok. Both parts of me are equally important and now that I’m in this pause I realize I should have paid attention to what that part of me was trying to say. Well, I’m listening now and the creative juices have been flowing.
I’m meditating a lot more and journaling. Spending at least a few minutes reflecting on these types of thoughts. Having more in-depth conversations with friends who are having similar experiences. Or sometimes just sending a lighthearted text as a way to let my friends know that I’m thinking about them. Where did I get that from, thinking it wasn’t ok to send a text if there wasn’t a purpose to it? Or that it wasn’t ok to do something that didn’t have a specific and executable end goal?
It is so funny to think about the things I used to think were important but actually are not.
This pandemic is absolutely awful, I know. But for those of us not in the frontline fighting this war on COVID-19, I hope we use this collective pause as a time to really reevaluate what our life was like pre-COVID-19 and what we want it to be like post-COVID-19. In the meantime, if you can’t do what you do, you do what you can, as Jon Bon Jovi says.
They sent me to Binghamton 