Forever Changed

We've all been hearing the questions: What will be the pandemic's long-term impact on our kids? How stunted will they be socially? Has an entire generation fallen behind academically? What about everyone else? There's been so much loss, so much pain. Will we ever fully recover? What are the long-term mental health implications? Is there really an end in sight?

This pandemic has knocked us on our heels. So many have suffered, and we all have well-founded concerns about the long-term implications. We've lived with this heaviness, this existential threat, for a full year, and to my untrained eye, the effects of stress appear to be cumulative.

Maybe I'm an incurable optimist, but in the face of these looming questions, I see and feel many reasons for hope. Cases have been trending down across the globe. The vaccine rollout has been ramping up. Many of our most vulnerable have been vaccinated as have the majority of our healthcare heroes. Treatment has improved. Days are getting longer, the snow is finally melting, and I've even seen blue sky and sun this past week.

Despite these signals, a heaviness remains. It's easy to give in to pessimism-- to believe that our scars won't heal. The sentiment goes something like this:

This poem won't win any literary awards, and it won't likely get commendation from the Norman-Vincent-Peale-power-of-positive-thinking society. It might even be hyperbolic, but let's call it directionally reflective of public sentiment. Or at least the sentiment I glean from the news or when I get sucked into too many social media forums. We face some big, daunting questions that can paralyze us.

Here's my question: What role can our mindset play in charting a different course? As Charles Swindoll famously said: "Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it." How do we react to this sledge-hammer 10%?

Forgive me for being a little gimmicky, but maybe it's time we flipped the script and were intentional about reversing our thinking. While we've been frustrated by discord and lack of leadership, maybe it's time we remember that real change comes when we act locally, and we start with our individual belief systems. Things work better from the bottom up, from each of us choosing to embrace joy, empathy, gratitude, and the promise of a new day. We can't minimize the pain so many have endured, but we can (and must) help each other heal. We can value connection rather than bemoan isolation. We can shine a light on resourcefulness rather than curse the darkness of scarcity.

I'm going to lean into my natural optimism-- maybe even say a serenity prayer or two. Sure, sometimes it's hard to know where to begin. In thirty years, some really smart people who have carried out longitudinal studies will be able to answer our bigger questions. In the meantime, I remind myself that mindset determines whether adversity makes us change for the better or worse. And that I can control what I can control. And that the first thing I need to control is my mindset.

We can and must emerge stronger. Maybe it's time to reverse the verse.