It’s easy to fixate on everything that goes to ground as time goes by: the disintegration of a relationship, the disappearance of good work well-done, the diminishment of a sense of purpose and meaning. But, as I’ve come to understand that life ‘composts’ and ‘seeds’ us as autumn does the earth, I’ve seen how possibility gets planted in us even in the most difficult of times.
– Parker Palmer
My friend shared an essay by Paul Ollinger yesterday. In the essay, Paul talks about a time when he was taking a flight, with his infant child. The flight got delayed, his baby had an unknown ear infection, his pregnant wife was exhausted, so in short, the trip was an overall disaster. Any one of us with children, has experienced at least once in our lives, one of those miserable trips, with young children. The next day, Paul described the horrible flight situation to his coworker, while apologizing for not getting to work on a project that they had going on, because of the terrible travel situation.
She replied, “Don’t worry about it. When you travel with babies, your only goal is to arrive.”
Paul then goes on to compare traveling with small children, with the situation which we have going on here. He says that many gurus are telling us that this is the time (this quarantine/coronavirus situation) to completely transform our minds, and bodies, and our souls, and to write a novel and to not only make 200 masks for our neighbors, but also to maybe sew 2-3 quilts, that could be good enough to be entered into craft contests, when this is all over. Paul says that while for a select few of us, this may be a very purposeful, productive, meaningful time in our lives, probably for most of us, the goal is to just arrive safely to the other side of this mess, all in one piece. That’s it. That is all that is required of us, much like traveling long distances with small children.
After reading this article, I reflected on the truth of what Paul is saying. I have felt an underlying pressure to find my purpose and to find the profound meaning and to find the lessons that this coronavirus experience has for me. I have felt pressure to utilize this “extra time” by making the most of it, to get major projects finished and new creative projects started. But we are still in the middle of the flight. And this is not ordinary travel. This is an experience like none that I have ever experienced. It is full of distractions, and unknowns, and worries and bumps along the way. It is an exhausting trip. Maybe it is okay and perfectly good enough, to just arrive, safely to the other side of it all, all in one piece.
In my almost 50 years of life, I can thankfully count, probably just on one hand, major, life-changing, “pull the rug out from under me” type experiences, that while in the midst of the experience, I was numb, shocked, confused, bewildered, sometimes panicked, fearful, dismayed, disillusioned, angry, depleted, and sometimes downtrodden. Right now, I think that I would put this coronavirus experience in that mix of this spicy soup, of my life’s most profound happenings. If this coronavirus situation does end up being one of those top five to eight truly intense, metamorphic life experiences, then I suppose it will follow the same pattern as the other past, penetrating events did. The lessons, the internal changes in me, the deepening in my faith and in the processes of Life and the Universe, the shifts in my priorities, the realizations of my true fortitude, will happen at a later time. Or perhaps more so, the realization of this growth and change happening in me, will come at a later time. These seeds of change in me, have probably already been planted, as the weeks of quarantine have gone by. The ground that they have been planted in, is fertile with emotion, and knowledge and wisdom, that only can come from experience. It is not barren soil. But I won’t realize the beauty of the garden of this experience, until I have arrived to the other side, without major harm. Right now, all I have to do is to trust that I am safely in one my life’s cocoon moments. I have to trust that all that I need to get me through this metamorphosis, is all tidily packed into the cocoon with me. I have to have the patience and the compassion, to let the process happen, in its own time and in its own way. Nature designed it that way. And when this particular episode in my life is all over, and I set out to flight, with my beautiful new wings, it is then, that I can fly high up into the sky and look down upon everything that has happened. I will gaze at the new, fresh, beautiful, flowering, brought to light, perspective in awe, because it will be like one which I have never known before.