Uncertain Times

As I set up my new workspace this morning and prepared to work from home I thought, “I am so grateful for having the luxury of working from home and getting paid during this health and economic crisis.” Some people are not getting paid to stay home, losing their jobs, businesses closing, lives disrupted and routines turned upside down. It is truly chaos in many ways.

Yet, it is also a slowing down. In some ways it is getting back to family and connecting. For some people they have been handed a gift.  A time to slow down and be more connected with the people we truly care the most about but spend the least amount of time with.  Yes, the world as it was kept us busy consuming our time and energy and leaving us feeling in many ways depleted.  But isn’t that what we do to feel worthy in a world that values DOING on the road to success?  In today’s world we define success as how much we have externally.  We are successful if we have the right job, name brand clothes, body type, college degrees, and of course the ultimate – MONEY.  We live in a lack mindset of never having enough or never being able to do enough.  This really comes down to, I’M NOT ENOUGH.  Through our social conditioning we are left feeling like we don’t have enough or that we are not enough.  We hang our worth on what we have rather than on whom we are and how we can contribute to the world. So, yes this can be a time to re-evaluate our values, desires and worth. We can take this moment in time to say, “What can I learn from this?”

Yet for others this experience brings so much pain.  Maybe the pain comes from a not knowing.  How am I going to spend all of this time with my kids?  What are we going to do?  How can I be their teacher and their mom?  I never, ever signed up to do homeschooling.  What is the “right” way to do all of this? And still others have the concern of where is my next meal coming from.  How will I provide for my family?

At a time like this one way to cope is to look at what we do have.  What to be grateful for.  In the face of uncertainty this can be a hard pill to swallow.  You might say (or want to say) “Be grateful? Well, fuck that. I hate every damn minute of this.” Yes, sometimes the “let’s look at the bright side” and “let’s be grateful” can get under our skin.  That’s okay. I too have been in those moments of “This sucks and I do not feel grateful.” It’s not saying look on the bright side every moment of the day or for that matter to feel grateful in every moment.  We are human having human feelings. In those moments we can give ourselves grace. It’s more about recognizing our feelings, honoring them, moving THROUGH them and building resilience. Gratefulness and positivity in hard times helps us to build resilience.

It is a time of reckoning. The anger, sadness, resentment, anxiousness, etc. were there before.  This pandemic happening in our world right now didn’t MAKE us anxious, sad, angry, resentful, etc.  These feelings have been there all along.  This pandemic, your kids, your spouse or your circumstance is however, triggering these feelings.   Over time these feelings have been shoved down, numbed and ignored.   They are now bubbling to the surface.  Will you shove them down, numb them and ignore them again?  Will you blame the pandemic, your kids, other family members or leaders for how you feel? Will you project your feelings out at them and then later feel guilty and start the cycle all over again?  Will you allow the feelings to bubble up?  Will you feel your feelings and allow them to do their job of healing? Will you lean into the discomfort and help your children through their discomfort and disruption in life?  Are you willing learn to manage with less and be grateful for what you DO have? Are you willing to   learn to slow down and see what’s in the moment? Are you willing to see your child’s behavior as a sign of feelings bubbling up in them?  Feelings that are so strong they don’t know how to deal with them.  Are you willing to help them understand their feelings, lean into them, allow them in and move THROUGH them? We can only ask others to do things we ourselves are willing to do.

We can choose resiliency or we can choose to be a victim; a victim to the pandemic, our children, our circumstances.  Resiliency doesn’t mean we decide this is all good and everything is fine.  Resiliency allows us to see the good through the bad, the light through the dark.  When we bring the dark into the light it is transformed.  This is a journey of the good, the bad and the ugly.  We choose what our next best step is. You get to decide what the next best step is for you.  It doesn’t matter if it’s the same as others. You get to decide what is good or what is right for you. 

So, what is the next best step you’re going to take?