We Can and Are Being and Doing This Together!

"Breathe it all in, love it all out." Mary Oliver

I last blogged on 2/24/20 – that was only 40 days ago (interesting number of days!) and in that time the world has changed before my eyes; I’ve been trying to catch my breath and find my way forward and I’m thinking you might be too. As my 16-year-old son said yesterday – “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life” so true, this is a first, even in my much longer life.

For the second half of the last 40 days I’ve been “busy” – but not busy in the way I have always thought of the word. Typically, my busy is focused on the doing – meeting with clients and colleagues, gathering with friends and family, carpooling, emailing, doing or “reminding” my family members to do household chores, running from thing to thing, fitting in one more task from the list – don’t get me wrong I’ve still been doing many of these things albeit in new ways and at the same time I’ve been busy trying to make sense of what is happening. I’ve been subsumed into the chaos of my thoughts – so much to process and so much time to process and yet clarity continues to escape me. 

This has been exhausting and as I sat down this weekend to write, I realized I’m tired because “making sense” is actually a false pursuit and a dead end based in my “doing” mindset. COVID-19 and all that it has brought with it and taken from us will never “make sense” – so what does that mean? Again, trying to make sense …

What if this is the time NOT to make sense but instead to SEE anew with curiosity the possibilities emerging from this sea change moment in history. What if this is the time to ask, “How is this pandemic happening FOR me?” A time for BEING more and DOING less. Right now we have a real-life opportunity for acceptance (my first blog post) and true leadership (my second blog post). And I believe we are called to this new path of being with what is, and from this place finding our inspiration both within and outside of ourselves, connecting, and leading. I have no idea how to do this right now, and that’s just the point, I've never faced this before. I’ve almost always been able to live well within my illusion of control and now I’ve suddenly been thrown outside that and I’m feeling sad, scared, angry, and at the same time compassionate and grateful. So much here! I get glimpses of what this new path looks like as I see communities pulling together, friends and family creating new ways to be close while still physically distant, neighbors reaching out to help one another. There is hope in feeling in community and the aliveness of connection; it is vulnerable, not always joyful, that’s where the wholeness is. We can rest in the presence of uncertainty together. Pause, breathe, move. We can and are being and doing this together!