JEANS | TOP (similar)
Before I ramble on, I want to make it clear: just like anyone else, my emotions are all over the place these days. And I’m not sure about you, but I fully believe that my mental state has been influenced by the weather every single day. Today the sun came out.
In one of my deep dives into the internet a few days ago, I stumbled upon a recent episode of John Mayer’s show on Instagram, Current Mood. I didn’t have the attention span to sit through it, so I just randomly scrolled through to see what was up. I only watched for about a minute or two, but what I absorbed in that short amount of time really shifted things for me. He put it like this:
Every day, we are getting hit with news about something new getting cancelled: school, your favorite music festival, a conference, theatre productions, movie premieres, the Olympics. It seems like each morning, your old reality takes another blow. Another problem appears. But really, as our friend John Mayer eloquently pointed out to me in the middle of the night, it’s all just one problem. The same problem. A really extremely big problem, but one all the same.
All is not lost. Our lives haven’t been cancelled. They’ve been stalled. There is a bug in the system, we have to reset some things, but it will be okay. A new kind of “okay” for many, I am sure. I won’t pretend like there aren’t those who have been hurled into an absolute nightmare because of this economic shutdown or families who will mourn the loss of loved ones who catch this horrible virus.
In a world where it feels like so much has been stripped away, I think it’s important that we try to focus on the one thing we’ve been gifted: time.
Really, there are two ways that we’ll be able to look back on this moment of life in a few years. Some will remember how miserable they felt, trapped inside listening to every word on the news, feeling angry about pressing pause on life. Others will look back and think of all that they created, the relationships they healed, the hangovers they felt from happy hour Zoom sessions. Personally, I’m choosing to focus on the latter. Key word: choosing. It’s a choice that I recognize I won’t be able to make each and every day while this pandemic runs its course. But I’ll give it my best shot. How about you?
