The human experience has been defined by our ability as a species to overcome any obstacle that has threatened us and come out stronger than before. Every hardship must come to an end at some point and once it has, we will have learned some very powerful lessons that will help us move forward and become better. Panic, uncertainty, and restlessness have become part of the new normal for a lot of us. However, the very popular phrase “this too shall pass” reminds us of the temporary nature of everything in both nature in general and the human experience concretely. Every hardship that we once thought we would never get through is now behind us, and this period of uncertainty that we are experiencing is just another difficulty that we will one day leave behind us and will become a mere distant memory. The human experience is a constant ebb and flow, oscillating constantly between the good and the bad. Sometimes we may rise to highs we could only dream of and sometimes we may sink to depths of which we think it will be too difficult to come out. Right now, the latter is more descriptive of our situation, but we must work to edge towards our peak, day by day, inch by inch.
What we need to focus on now is how we want to remember this collective hardship that we are experiencing on a global scale, what we want to have accomplished throughout this time, and how we can help ourselves and those around us to come out of this situation in the smoothest way possible. While we are all experiencing a global pandemic, on top of other hardships simultaneously, all of us are experiencing it to varying degrees depending on where we are, where we´re from, who we have accompanying us through this trying time, and what our financial situation looks like. While sometimes it may be hard to imagine how and when this will all end, we must remember that it will, like all things do. That’s why it’s in our best interest, and in the interest of our communities, to focus on making ourselves stronger and on figuring out what we can do now to make a positive impact that will lead us into a brighter future. We need to focus on what we can do to guard our hearts, our minds, and our health and what we can do to protect the most vulnerable people in our families, our friend groups and our communities.
We must check in on each other, have patience with each other and love on each other diligently and recognize that everyone reacts to difficulties in their own way. Each individual and every society is marked by perpetual change, and while change is frightening for most people, it is something we must tackle head on and accept as a condition of the human experience and not try to fight against it. If change is inevitable, it is up to us to decide what we want that change to look like. We need to stop looking for someone to blame and look at everyday as an opportunity to inch away from the bad and draw closer to the good through consistent positive thoughts and actions.
