Do What You Can
Cannon Beach, Oregon. 2021
It is an impossibility to write diary entries dressed up as blog posts and not dwell on the past year or so.
Life and times for all of us have been hard, transformative, punitive, pensive, and above all, long. Sadness and the pregnant wait for better days have a way of wearing one down. I could see it on the faces around me. At first, a large question mark signaling total lack of understanding - a pandemic? What does that even mean? To later, as the news of those impacted started to hit closer and closer to home, the question mark was transformed into the sobering lines of stress and fear around the eyes, into the pursed lips of chocked sobs. And finally, the numbness of ‘please dear God, dear scientists, dear whomever, please help and please help us fast’ settling in for months.
For me (and my little tribe), this has been a difficult time and while none of us have perished, we know people that have. Fathers and mothers of friends, co-workers overseas, people that are both strangers but familiar through the social media threads that weave us all. I remember reading an article from the New Yorker sharing the tremendously devastating story of the orphaned children in India. Babies and toddlers being found next to the bodies of their deceased parents days after their passing. A whole generation left to fend for themselves from cradle to the hope of a stable life somehow, somewhere. All so entirely damaging. The hand of time moving so painfully slow…
At home, some job opportunities were lost, others were found. We were never sick, though, through masked faces and fingers raw with so much sanitizer, we went into the world - a grocery store, a park, a friend’s backyard. Each human connection, a precious reminder of what we had and took for granted. I, due to the high level of invincibility (and stupidity) I carry with me, was never afraid of the virus; but I feared for my parents, locked in a small apartment in Brazil, my sister with her delicate health, and my son, a perfectly healthy young man that shares my propensity for invincibility.
Through it all, and the ‘through’ is still in full swing, all I could think about was - this is a chance to reinvent, Julia. The things that were carried but not needed may need to be put down. The things that were important may need to be tested to see if they are gold or just vermeil. Arms will need to stretch to hold more people. You will need to work harder and smarter. You will need to reinvent.
That is fundamentally one of the reasons why I am writing again. The ‘what ifs’ of this pandemic leaving me wanting to step up to the calling of doing what I can to do what I love. The urge to reinvent working as fuel to take me further.
I know each one of us has tried and coped with these times in different ways, as we were dealt different hands; and yet the underlying hope is still the same. The beginning of a better moment, sprouting out of the wet soil from our collective tears, can be seen and heard and felt if only we do what we can to do what we love.
-jm