Lessons from loss and love.
--
How I’ve learned to keep going, even in the darkest tunnel.
“We can do hard things, like be alive and love deep and lose all, because we do these hard things alongside everyone who has ever walked the Earth with her eyes, arms, and heart wide open.” -Glennon Doyle, Untamed
The weird thing about being alive during COVID is that life seems to go on anyway. Regardless of the state of the world, people are still having babies, getting married, losing jobs, gaining jobs, burying family members, creating, destroying, and celebrating life in whatever ways they know how. Even despite all this mess pressing in on us.
Life goes on.
Sometimes, the beauty of impermanence astounds me.
Today, I walked out onto my back porch to journal for the first time since before the smoke, and I realized I’d forgotten how good the air feels. I forgot how fresh and exquisite it is to feel it coat the inside of my lungs, and brush the outside of my body. I forgot how big and how vast the sky, how big and how vast our world, how big and how vast our choices.
Living inside four walls for so much time, I think, has made us all a bit short-sighted.
These last few months, whenever something goes wrong at work, I will hear my boss say, “Because nothing can go right in 2020.” Every time. An order gets mixed up and we suddenly have to rush to figure out an alternative within 24 hours. The refrigerator stops cooling. Somebody gets sick and has to call out.
“Because it’s 2020.”
Every time I hear this, my gut reaction is to empathize, and so what I say is, “I know. It’s so hard.”
A moment later, however, what I think is: “But what about all the people who have become new members over the past few months because they love what you’ve created? What about the trips you’ve gotten to take, exploring places you’ve never been before? What about the fact that we’ve been able to adapt, stay open, stay alive — even despite all the shutdowns?”
What I mean is: But… What about all the beauty?
A few weeks back, a friend shared with me an analogy that went something like this: just because you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel doesn’t mean…
