There’s nothing like a global crisis and distance to give perspective to force us to look in the mirror, to reassess our lives, the people in it, and the world that we have created.
We want direction, but never embraced or sought it, so now we are forced to find it.
We lost ourselves in the daily grind, so now we are meant to see it, create it, or find it. We will finally learn what we truly need, what we want and seek, and what we can really give. We will learn we never asked those closest to us the very same questions, or we just didn’t listen the way we should have.
We will see our best and worst selves in mirrors we forgot existed.
We will see the toxic in work, family, and society, but we may find some good too. We see the greed, selfishness, politicking, and power trips. But we see humanity, compassion, and support in the most unlikely places.
We will take up new hobbies, find old comforts and suffer or thrive in the solitude of our existence and the noise of those we live with.
We will be reminded that our health is taken for granted, our time not always be appreciated and our efforts sometimes rejected. We will also learn how much we neglected, how we failed at making the special ones feel special, and focused too much on the now instead of that which we want for eternity, too much on a future that may never come instead of the now.
We will find we gave the bare minimum to some of our most important forever people and everything to ones we can’t see in our futures for much longer. We have received the same.
We took people for granted, today they may be there but tomorrow, we just never know.
At the same time, we will learn who to appreciate and who appreciated us, who believed in us and who we really believed in.
We may wake up and find that the life we are living is not the life we want to continue living, that the love we thought we had does not exist, the career so carefully structured has been outgrown. Or we may discover the exact opposite, that the life we had doubted is everything we see for ourselves, the love that we had given up on is reignited and the career is everything we are.
We will get to see people for who they really are. We will run from some, the relationships with others will change and the most important ones, we will strengthen our bonds and truly connect with them in the most astounding ways. Why? Because that is the most fundamental part of life.
We find that even the most beautiful words lose their meaning when there are actions to be taken that never happen, and words that were plain and dreary will take a meaning so powerful when there are no actions left or the actions are not possible at that moment.
The distance will teach us that the longer we live without something, someone or some place, the easier it becomes or it will fill our souls with the deepest ache to remind us of the true value of that which is far away.
Our faith will be tested. And yet if we are lucky it will never be lost. We will finally learn that each and every moment is our purpose in action.
Through it all, we will learn there is only so much time, time to work, to play, to self-care, bond and care. Through it all we will be reminded that sacrifices need to be made, some things will have to go and our priorities will have evolved. By the end of it all, if we are really open and honest with ourselves, our worlds will have truly changed and more importantly so will we.
There’s nothing quite like a global crisis and distance to give us perspective.
