Do you remember a time when the word unprecedented wasn’t spoken 10,000 times a day, hanging out with friends wasn’t done on zoom, and ‘social distancing’ were two words we wouldn’t fathom placing side by side? No? Same.
By day 6,096 of quarantine, that time seems somewhere far off in the rear-view mirror – just a mirage that can barely be made out.
Constant uncertainty fills our conversations, thoughts, and newsfeeds. Maybe the obscurity is about our jobs – when will we return to the office? When will our layoff end? Maybe it’s our social life – will we ever hug our loved ones again? We can fill a book series with our questions – volumes 1 through 16. These thoughts are happy to run rapid through our mind, swirl into clouds of apprehension and anxiety.
So, why do we let them?
Uncertainty – a loss of control. Why focus our energy on questions we can’t answer? Things so out of our control even the experts don’t have the answers. Why spend precious moments spiraling downwards instead of looking upwards?
Every single day there are a number of things out of our control from the weather to moving up in our jobs to the traffic in the streets, yet there are an equal number of decisions that fall entirely in our wheelhouse.
We choose how to spend our time. We can decide to run even though it’s raining. Or to read a book over Netflix or a workout over pizza. Heck, we can pack all four options into the same day. Each morning we get to choose where to channel our energy.
Athletes wake up every day not knowing if they will ever reach the pinnacle of their sport – win the ultimate trophy, medal, or championship. Yet each time they choose to focus on the things in their control – their training, nutrition, their coaches and teammates, in their own process. They channel their energy into what can be controlled, instead of what can’t.
Each and every day – through COVID and beyond – we get to make our own choices. Even now, amidst chaos, we still have control.
The ground has always shifted under our feet, but each day we choose to trust that it will hold us while we walk, stomp, and dance on it. The ground is going to keep shifting, choose to dance.
Sara
