The Power of Crises

We can start today.

We will get through this.

Nothing stops the sun from rising.

I have come to today the long, hard way. Where some have easier roads, I kind hacked my way through the jungle. And I feel thankful now, safe at home with an amazing partner. There are many others who have shared their struggles. As a country, we are facing a collective and surreal moment as we are locked into our homes. This is a mixed bag—some fear, others disdain and all of us worry, “What about tomorrow?”

Truthfully, no one ever knows how long a hard time will last. The main thing I have learned in my life is that there is so much beauty that comes from the crises we endure and the trauma we experience. It rises up like a tenacious flower from mud.

No one has seen something like the COVID-19 pandemic in our living memory. It will change us. As the first generation sheltered from any visible war, civil unrest, or great depression comes into their prime, this may be our first shared trauma we are coping with. We have had time to think about mindfulness, ethical workplaces, development in ways that were unavailable to previous generations. In its own way, it has been a renaissance.

As a culture, we do not allow a lot of airtime for what I will call the stubborn flowers of bad times. We seem afraid of victims. It is as though we feel it is contagious. We want to think that we are safe because bad things only happen to bad people. This virus says something really important: there is no discrimination on a fundamental level. We all have parents, children, and friends who are as important to us as our own sense of self. They make us whole.

No bullshit: we will get through this. Maybe scathed, maybe changed, but certainly with new perspective. There is an opportunity to come out of this pandemic and its economic backlash stronger. We can start that today as we take care of each other. Smile at strangers (from your safe social distance), hang Christmas lights out your window, call people you have not seen. Now is the time to start what we should be doing all the time.

Empathy, hope, and perspective are the resilient offshoots of trauma. Never be the bad you suffer. As we work through these times, we should learn a little something about how delicate all of us are. If there is justice, goodness, and hope it is because we make it. Hope is not something that is killed by adversity. It is something that comes because of it. It is something we sow into the bedrock of our new world.

Some of the strongest, gentlest, and bravest people I have known have come out of adversity. There are stories in survivors that we should all hear ahead of time. There is the beauty in all of this—its chance for us to feel for one another and understand the preciousness of our time.

When we do return to normal—and we will—let’s come back transformed. Maybe, we can all get each other a little more. Loss teaches us a lot. It teaches us the essential and too frequently overlooked fragility of the time we have. We are all people in this world together. And maybe we should take a little time throughout our workdays, to actually be our whole selves at work. Because we have not been doing that. We have been in a renaissance, but we have also been in a “me.” The traumas of our history have forced us to see the fullness of humanity—every veteran on the street, every hate crime, every televised protest. Every time we pop onto a video call these days we realize that we never took the time to meet the families, pets, and environments that make us a team.

When the new normal comes to pass, let us remember this moment that is teaching us that we all need each other. We need each other to be safe and to suffer through loneliness. We need each other—and it is beautiful. And when we get back to the new normal, hopefully we will remember to keep checking in on each other. In the meantime, please take the time to help each other now.