A Rare and Priceless Gift

This week I had my first real taste of freedom. It was just a taste, but it was beautiful. The beaches in our town have started a “soft” opening, which (I think) means they are just open to town residents and just for socially-distant activity—walking, running, surfing, etc. This opening happened to coincide with my daughter’s 6th birthday and some beautiful weather, so we headed to the beach with trusted friends and enjoyed what felt like a release from prison. It filled me with joy, and even a little hope. Perhaps the future could look a little brighter than it has these past weeks. I’ve learned a lot during this pandemic-quarantine thing, however, so my mind really did not drift too far from where we were in those precious moments at the beach. It remained in the moment, soaking it all in.

My family has now been sheltering in place together for 66 days. We have had over 9 weeks of working from home, distance learning, and staying put. During this “cozy” time all cooped up together in our home-office-school-prison I’ve really learned quite a bit. Here are some of the highlights.

The best decision I made in college was to change my major from elementary education to psychology. Having done 9 weeks of distance learning with my kindergartener and first grader, I am now absolutely certain that an elementary classroom would not have been a good setting for my career, or for my mental health. I’ve learned that while families are meant to spend a fair bit of time together, they are not meant to spent ALL of their time together, and quite frankly, it’s just not fun to do so. There really is a very good reason that we all disperse for periods of time most days. I’ve learned that I love my kids unconditionally. I know this one because my love for them has survived some pretty brutal tests. I’ve learned that children have an amazing capacity to forgive, and I am forever grateful for this because I’ve needed this forgiveness quite a few times. Most members of my family could use a little “independence training,” and marriage vows might do well to include a clause about extended lockdowns. I’ve also learned that the bathrooms still need to be cleaned even when people aren’t coming to visit, alcohol does not solve all of your problems (or any of them—I already knew this but apparently I needed a reminder), and it really isn’t good for one’s mental health to give up showers and live in the same sweatpants every day for months on end. Starting the day with a shower and some clean, regular-life clothes is apparently about more than looking presentable when you go out.

Probably the most important lesson I’ve learned, however, in all seriousness, is that we really need to stop living in the future. I think back to where I was 10-12 weeks ago. I had a life. I had plans. I had my routine, my kids had theirs, my husband had his. I knew what my life, and my kids’ life, would look like for years to come. It all seemed so predictable, and so much in my control. I could shape the future and make it what I wanted it to be. And it all seemed so important. The schools my kids would attend, the achievements they would make, the work I would do, the vacations we would take. We couldn’t possibly live without all of those plans and visions and things we would do and achieve and experience.

I can see now what an illusion all of that was.

I remember vividly that first weekend of preparing. My husband asked me to shop and “stock up” on what we would need for the quarantine. I had absolutely no idea what that meant. I remember walking through the supermarket and the big box wholesale store almost aimlessly, a little bit lost, wondering what, exactly, do we need? How much do we need? What is it that we are preparing for? Are we preparing to be sick, or to never leave our houses again, or…what?

I had my list of all of the things I was “supposed to” need: enough hand sanitizer to bathe in every day, enough soap to wash our hands every 10 minutes or so, enough toilet paper to last the next year (which I will remind everyone once again we can completely live without), enough cleaning products to ensure that no germ ever lives longer than 30 seconds on any surface of the house, and enough food to store for…how long? I was plagued by questions. Why did we need so much hand sanitizer and soap if we weren’t leaving the house or interacting with other people for however long? Why did we need to clean our houses every half hour if no one was sick (yet) and no one was coming to visit? Why did we need so much toilet paper when water actually works just fine and we all have showers in our houses, and how much food can we reasonably store in our home? Was I really trying to prepare to avoid the supermarket for like the next month, or several months? That wasn’t even possible.

I realize I’m being a bit facetious here, but my point is that I, for maybe the first time in my life, literally had absolutely no idea what the future held, and I had absolutely no control over what was about to happen. I had a choice to make. I could be fearful and controlling and search every store for every drop of hand sanitizer and every sheet of toilet paper I could find, buy them all and then spend days and weeks worrying we didn’t have enough. Alternatively, I could think about what my family needed in that moment, what my home could actually store in that moment, and go from there without worrying about it. I opted for the latter.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was receiving my first of many wisdom lessons I would receive during this time of sheltering in place. This was the easiest one, actually, many of the others have been much harder for me. I tend to be a rather practical person and I quickly came to the conclusion even then that no matter what happened outside of my home, it was outside of my control and all I could do was try to be smart about what was happening inside my home at that moment in time. I couldn’t plan for a future I couldn’t begin to predict, and I simply would have to go out every however often to get supplies. I would figure it out as I went, based on whatever was going on in that moment in time. I realized there was just no way to know what was coming, so I could only do then what needed to be done for that moment in time. The rest would evolve the way it did and I would deal with whatever that turned out to be.

Now if only that wisdom had made itself consciously clear to me then, the ongoing quarantine may have been more manageable for me. As I mentioned before, that wisdom lesson, in that specific situation, was the easiest of those I have received. The others, basically all with the same theme, have been a bit more of a struggle for me. To say the sheltering in place has been hard would be an understatement. I’ve spent a fair bit of time mourning the loss of the “freedom” and “routine” and “predictability” of the past, and looking toward the future when I (have believed that I) can get all of these things back. I’ve dealt with the at times incredibly uncomfortable emotions that come with the drastic changes to my and my family’s life in ways that haven’t always been helpful to me or to my family. I’ve longed to escape, I’ve wallowed a bit in my inability to do so, and I’ve tried to at least numb the discomfort a little bit at times. None of it has worked particularly well.

I’ve also had moments of acceptance and have even recognized the opportunity present in this situation to evolve. Sheltering in place with the same people for weeks at a time, the same people who just happened to be the ones most adept at pushing all of my buttons, has taught me a lot about myself. I’ve allowed myself to at least intermittently be open to these lessons. And I have learned.

Perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned is that we really need to stop living in the future and believing that the external things we seek to have, achieve, and experience are so important. At least we need to do this if we want to find true joy and to truly live life to the fullest. The reality is that all we have is the present moment and whatever is happening in it. The future is an illusion, one we create in our minds with our plans and our visions and our desires. The future is almost always based on our expectations of ourselves and others, our “need” to demonstrate our own worth to ourselves and others through external achievements and material possessions. It’s based in our faulty belief that we have control, which we believe to reduce our fear of the reality that we don’t. We attempt to take solace in our illusory belief that we can plan, predict and control what will happen in the future, when if nothing else, this pandemic has shown us that we cannot.

For the first time in our lives we have absolutely no idea what the future holds. We have no idea if/when/how our kids will go back to school, if/when/how we will go back to work, if/when/how we will resume life as we knew it before. We will continue to move forward, but how, to where, and with what? We simply don’t know.

Here we all are, at home with whomever our “each other” is—or isn’t if we live alone—and all we really have is what is going on inside—inside our homes, inside our relationships, and inside ourselves. Right now. And the reality is, this is all we have ever had. The rest of it has been nothing more than the workings of our minds.

What I have is realized is that if we attend to this and allow it to be what it is, it truly is a rare and priceless gift. Not an easy one by any means, for me this gift has been quite painful and difficult. I’ve learned there are things about myself and my relationships I need to change if I am to be authentic and true to myself, and I’ve had to sit with emotions that are very uncomfortable. But again, if we attend to it and open ourselves to the lessons inherent in it, it can be one of the most meaningful periods of our own evolution.

I go back in my mind to those moments in the supermarket when I realized that there was no future, at least none I could visualize. Then I go back to those precious moments of freedom on the beach earlier this week. I appreciate them each for what they were—moments in time with lessons to be learned. The former taught me that the future is an illusion and all we have is the present moment, and the latter taught me that the present moment is absolutely precious and worth being fully present in.

What a rare and priceless gift.