For years now, my mind has been spinning, trying to understand and interpret and diagnose the wreckage and the gifts of the pandemic. Although we are, by no means, out of the pandemic, some degree of normalcy has returned. There are birthdays and sleep overs and sporting events now, and frequent grocery trips have long since resumed. I’ve even gone to the theater. There are lists to make and people to see, and exotic trips to catch up on.
The world is spinning quickly too, like my mind.
The wreckage of the pandemic has been hard to fathom and impossible to quantify. In my own life, I think of one of the most terrible things — having to peer at my father through the glass of an assisted living facility he entered into right before the pandemic. Touching the glass where his hand was, on the other side. It was an awful and dehumanizing moment, or at least felt that way. I never got to say goodbye to my childhood home - it was sold in the midst of the pandemic, and we were robbed of our last Thanksgiving there as a family. There are a thousand familial hardships and heartaches.
I feel grateful to be able to stand with others in the rubble of life. It makes me feel useful, perhaps not despite but because of the rubble I too have had to contend with. Some of them are my clients, who have had to sift through death and divorce. There are kids and legal issues. There are grieving siblings or warring family members. There is deep pain and vulnerability and sadness. I don’t have answers for a lot of things and I can’t fix everything, but I care and I make better what I can, and it helps me too to be there.
There are good things, too.
Even the federal government has resumed travel, so Jason is gone for work some weeks. A silver lining to the pandemic for us has been that nothing - no, I’m sure of it - nothing would have allowed Jason to work from home, short of a pandemic. It has been wonderful to have him at home more, and he has been better for it - it’s amazing what a good thing it can be to trade your commute time for a run in the woods.
The resumption of school has only been good, and I THINK my kids would agree. A year and half of the kids doing zoom school drove me nearly insane. The teachers tried their best, but people that age just aren’t meant to stare at screens all day and be anything close to productive at the same time. My kids slowly melted into the couch, slouching pajama-clad puddles. They were dying for the day to end and resented what little busy work they had. Meanwhile, I was constantly on call to try to help them navigate the school’s labyrinthine technology platforms, decipher homework instructions, and try - often in vain - to remember fourth grade educational tedium that was lost FOREVER to the recesses of my mind. Thank goodness for teachers!
There are babies, and kiddos getting their driver’s licenses (is this in the GOOD category?), and there is young love and old love and refreshed love. There is a yurt for sanctuary. New friends. Stronger bonds with older ones.
There is no quantifying or even understanding what has happened. I’m not always sure what threads are unfurling.
But I will toss out a wish for 2023 to the Janus-faced winds. My wish, in all of this noise and impending chaos, in all of the rubble that we can see and the millions of invisible wounds that we can’t see, is that love and humility, kindness and gratitude will triumph. We swim in these undercurrents all the time, and sometimes, we tread water far above, buoyed by anger or regret - but they are there nonetheless. My wish is that 2023 would be submerged in generosity and new levels of magnanimity, and that its fruits would spill over into every year thereafter.
That’s my wish. That’s what I’m contemplating, for myself, my business, and those I come into contact with.
