Silver Lining

Posted on March 15, 2020. Filed under: Uncategorized |

We’ve been on isolation protocol for 9 days. I could cover all the challenges and stresses associated with such an abrupt change to daily life, but you can read about those everywhere. As we settle in to an unknown amount of time in this new reality, I have moved beyond lamenting about the points of friction where something is not as good or easy or comfortable as I am used to. This period is it’s own thing and I’ve accepted a new baseline. With that acceptance comes the opportunity to improve and optimize and build up new behaviors and routines that are for this moment specifically.

Call it a silver lining, but I’ve had more intimate conversations with friends and family in the past week than I have in the preceding year or so. Life gets busy, we have a little dude who is about to turn 1…there’s work, and relationship, and kid, and surface area with that wider set of folks who I deeply care about had gotten smaller. Even time spent and conversations with parents and siblings have spaced out as everyone builds up their own lives and families.

With all of the context that gets in the way of nurturing valued relationships shed, and most everyone I know holed up in their apartments or homes with nothing to do and a lot on their minds, I’ve started Facetiming a pretty wide set of friends and family, many of whom I don’t talk to that much in normal life. Everyone is available, all the time, and that’s an opportunity to reconnect, check in, get support, give support, and frankly pass the time. Nobody has important things to do. Everyone picks up. If we were living in Gchat days, my entire graph is green. It’s really really nice.

Don’t get me wrong, when I zoom out at what’s going on, which I do quite a bit…it’s very, very hard. But there are moments of warmth and connection available solely because of this fucked up context, and for those I am grateful.