Pandemic Lessons: Top Ten Things I’ve Learned During the Time of Corona (in no particular order)

Let me preface this by saying that I’ve pretty much always been an inward-looking, analytical-type human. If there’s a problem, the solution is usually within instead of without, and after I waste a satisfactory amount of time trying to disprove that notion, I look inward and get to work. The same has been true over the course of the last fifteen months. The following are my takeaways from a year spent mostly alone, only able to show emotion using my eyes, and only able to identify people by theirs.

#1: I like my own company. A lot. I started preparing breakfast before work just to eat with my favorite person (myself). That statement started as a joke, but the more time we spent together (me, myself, and I), the more the truth in it revealed itself. I like the person I’m becoming, and I’m content to walk through the quiet, dark spaces with that person.

#2: I don’t like loud restaurants, especially ones that include live music. I love to eat incredible food. I love to listen to inspiring live music. I love to talk to good friends. But the combination of these three things is abysmal, and I have no desire to go back to it. Pre-Rona, I spent an inordinate amount of time in this situation under the guise of connecting with the people I like. What I found is that almost no connection takes place because you can’t hear. You mime words at each other, saying ‘huh’ and ‘what was that’ or you just smile and nod because you haven’t the foggiest idea what that person said unless you’ve developed an unnatural ability for lip-reading or have a career as a dentist.

#3: Time is not a renewable resource. I’ve become hyper aware of how I use my time and who gets my time. I’ve quit chasing after people who don’t want it. I’ve quit offering it to people I don’t want to have it. I’ve read stacks of books, written an embarrassing number of words, worked on learning a new language, and spent every available hour for several weeks laid up with a knee injury becoming Queen of Fishdom -- a stupid iPhone game that I enjoyed immensely and detest with vehemence for the timesuck it is.

#4: The eyes don’t lie even if the lips are capable. The amount of truth you see in a person’s eyes is staggering, especially if they’re all you can see. Masks (when used properly, of course, and cover a person’s nose and mouth) force us not to turn away from what we usually try to avoid: pain. A genuine smile starts in the eyes. The eyes don’t phone that in, but we’re so conditioned to look for tell-tale signs on the rest of the face that we miss the authenticity and believe what we expect to see. The eyes don’t disguise hurt or sadness or joy or anger. When someone’s eyes light up, it says more about your presence in the room, your presence in their life than anything they could ever say or do. The reverse is also true. When someone doesn’t even take the time to look up, saying ‘hello’ or ‘nice to see you’ is invalid.

#5: Masks became a way of showing up in the world, instead of disappearing into the background. We only worked from home the first two months of the pandemic and then returned to a world of masked co-workers and masked students, some of whom only saw me in passing, frequently not long enough to converse. My face became a billboard on which I could advertise my support, my understanding, or my hope for a better world, a second chance, change. Now that the masks are coming off, the question becomes: will I leave the real mask off -- the one the piece of cloth has been covering for the last year and a half?

#6: The online world allows for even more connection than in-person interactions, if we use it intentionally. This year I got to take several trainings with the King Center in Atlanta because the Pandemic forced them to explore an online world previously unnecessary. Because of that, I made a friend on another continent, and learned from people I value that I had never been able to interact with because of the distance. I attended conferences in other states that were previously cost and time prohibitive. I met a host of new friends in another region of the country, all working toward purpose and greatness, that I wouldn’t know were it not for the existence of Zoom. And I also reconnected with a beautiful soul from the past who proved that presence and investment is not based on physical proximity.

#7: Ally is not a word you give yourself. Just like being powerful or kind or woke, the moment you tell someone you are, you’ve proven you’re not. Allyship is determined through action, through authentic existence, and moves on a sliding scale depending on how open you are to learn and grow from what you learn. It is also determined by the person or people who consider you an ally. And it is a label you may never even know you have. The second you’ve become a self-proclaimed expert, you’ve lost the war. True wisdom comes in recognizing the constant presence of your own ignorance -- you teach it and in doing so you are able to highlight ignorance you couldn’t previously see. That is the beauty and the frustration of turning on a light in a dark room.

#8: Silence is underrated. We live in a loud world of car horns and beeping check out lines, of sirens and televisions. The number of things we have to keep us from listening is overwhelming. I love music but I now have many hours where I turn it off. I won’t listen to it outside lest I miss the birdsong or a frog symphony or the aria shared between trees. I sometimes don’t listen to it while I’m writing lest I miss the sound of my own voice. I’ve reached points over the past year or so where I couldn’t take another thing in: no more books, no more podcasts, no more zoom calls, no more Netflix and go insane. There is something undeservedly freeing about an impenetrable silence.

#9: Friendship is life-sustaining. Okay. This wasn’t really a lesson so much as a confirmation. Friendships ebb and flow. People you depend on in one phase of your life don’t always show up in the next. Learning to let go is a grief you don’t expect, but a grief that abides alongside gratitude. You mourn the ones who ebb and rejoice in the ones that flow. And you absolutely thank God for the ones who stay and return and persist with your best interest at heart no.matter.what. I am so fortunate to have those friends.

#10: A return to normal isn’t possible. Returning to normal is all I’ve heard since the pandemic began. How do we get back to the way things were? The answer to that is we don’t. And I don’t want to. To return would be to negate everything we’ve learned, everyone we’ve become. That makes no sense. Why should we have had to endure a transformation as chaotic and painful as the past fifteen months if we were just going to go back to the way we always were? Normal isn’t real. Normal doesn’t exist. There is only the life we live and the life we don’t. And the life we live builds on every precious, horrible, terrifying, beautiful experience we have. I’m good with that.