How Pandemic Becomes Possibility:
Five Questions to a Reboot
Done with Groundhog Day?
We’ll remember how we felt a year ago when the pandemic froze our life choices in place.
Whatever your situation, use this moment — as we turn the corner a year out — to sharpen and shift your intentions, to Reclaim Plan A. Here’s how:
1) What did you gain, learn, or discover in the pandemic? Did you find that you’re not a half-bad cook? Or that a walk in the park brought more joy than you may have anticipated? Small things emerged for many of us as touchstones. Take a moment and identify 3 to 5 discoveries you made this last year. I found that cooking a sparky soup and sharing it with the neighbors in my Manhattan co-op was gratifying. I delighted in eating outside in freezing weather with leg warmers and a cashmere scarf, dressed for the Dr. Zhivago set. Netflix! Enough said. Where did you take a closer look and notice something beautiful, unexpected, no matter how slight? What did you discover about the good fortune of your days?
2) What did you lose? For some, the loss has been unspeakable. Loved ones, jobs, displacement, chronic illness. For others, losses have been recurring discomforts — isolation from family and friends, a disruption of simple routines such as grocery shopping, going to the gym, enjoying a meal out. Wherever you are on the spectrum of loss, capture what it’s been, even if it’s modest in relative terms. My losses include an annual dinner at the Angus Barn with my siblings in which we get our older brother to pick up a hefty check. I lost work that would have taken me to places like Barcelona and Monte Carlo. I didn’t see my son at Christmas for the first time in 32 years. Sigh. I know I was lucky in the pantheon of pain — yet these losses are real and are now part of my history.
3) If you could have a do-over — if March 2020 came with an imaginary reboot — what would you wish for? What would you change about your work, your location, your network? What creative pursuits might you have had in place? How about your spiritual life? What would you hope to have in your closet, your pantry, your bookshelf? What would you want to wake up to, what vista do you dream of? What type of effort would feel nourishing, worthy, stimulating? Confession: my thought was to run — to escape the 600 square feet I call home, to live in the country, to be doing something worthy, to can strawberry jam. And yet, practical constraints and a cloudy vision held me back. So, I was forced to make peace with my reality. I got a new rug to make yoga a greater pleasure. I explored more vegetarian dishes and fell in love with coconut milk. I found something to grow on my balcony even in the darkest days of winter. That’s the visual in this story. It’s really thriving now that Spring is upon us. I found a way back into playwriting after I admitted I need deadlines so I enrolled in a workshop. I began in January and am launched into a new story that has swallowed my weary pandemic self with its generative demands.
4) What won’t you take for granted anymore? Here is a wake-up call that can sustain us in the months and years ahead. If we’ve learned something about the gifts of everyday living, let it be tattooed in our hearts. What are you newly grateful for or more appreciative of? I earnestly thank the clerks at my grocery store for ringing up my order. My neighbors? So grateful. That I have an incredible business partner in a different state and that we found Zooming drew us closer than the routine phone calls. We’ll “see” each other more even as the world rights itself. We navigated our business through the tough shoals of cancelled projects, decimated balance sheets, and pivoted to find a way forward. My friendships have deepened. One in Ireland, several in NJ, my sister in NC. I have spent more quality time with people I care about and I won’t go back to the old ways of not tending to the relationships that matter the most to me.
5) Now what? In our Reclaim Plan A workshop, we do an exercise called “Being Akiba.” The story from the Talmud tells of Akiba, on his deathbed, visited by the Rabbi. Akiba confesses his shortcomings: he has certainly not been Moses and he says so. And the wise man replies: “God will not judge you for not being Moses, God will judge you for not being Akiba.” So, in what way is your promise and potential unfulfilled? What parts of you are unrealized, waiting for that moment to bloom? Find those ideas, ambitions, intentions that spark you, that attract you — and find ways to let go of the clutter of the days. Reflect on your discoveries — how can you amplify what sustains you? What small step can you take that puts you closer to your “do-over” vision for the last year? What new habits and practices do you want to hold on to? With the sense of accomplishment that comes with slogging through a tough cycle, comes a boost of resolve you can apply to small changes that will translate to big differences. We can grow into new behaviors and healthier mindsets especially when prompted by life events.
Wake up to the new you, the one that struggled and survived. The one that persisted. Plant a seed for tomorrow — take a course, read a blog, develop a new friendship, claim your future. Take a walk and notice something small and green that’s pressing its way up from the ground. That’s you, turning pandemic into possibility.
