Tag Archives: COVID

The Absolute Worst Time To Make A Big Life Decision…Or Not?

“Losing your head in a crisis is a good way to become the crisis.” –C.J. Redwine, Defiance

“Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.” –Erol Ozan

Hello friend,

I was talking with a friend last week—she’s about my age–and out of nowhere, she dropped this bomb on me: “I’ve come into a little bit of money, and I am thinking I might retire.” She said she would like to relax, travel, volunteer–all of that stuff that we all say we are going to do when we retire. You know: unstructured and unobligated living. The dream. Well, my dream anyway. To me, it sounds like everything I have always wanted: casual, fluid, free. The only problem: none of that sounds like her!

In other conversations, she has shared with me how difficult the first months of the pandemic were on her, as that was the time when she was not able to go into her work and have that structure, schedule, and task list that her tightly-wound personality requires. It was a mental health struggle to be without her job (not the income part). After reiterating that fundamental aspect of her personality to me numerous times in recent months, you can imagine my surprise the other day she when totally flipped the script with the announcement of a possible retirement. WHAT?!?!? I was flabbergasted. A reasonable guess would have been that she was clinging for dear life to the normalcy and regularity of her career in these wildly uncertain times. Nope! Just the opposite. After explaining herself, she at least showed her self-awareness by asserting that with all of the stressors that our whole society has been flooded with this year—coronavirus, George Floyd, Donald Trump, etc.—she probably has no business making any major Life decisions at this point.

That counterpoint flashed me back to last Autumn, a conversation I had with my niece. She is a freshman in college, and she was by that point a few months into it and feeling very unsure as to whether her chosen school was really the right place for her. Not sure about the people, the vibe of the campus, all of that stuff that is crucial at that transformative age that so many of us recall as a life-defining year on our journey of self-discovery. I remember saying to her, “This is going to come as no comfort to you, but I think you may not get to have an answer to that question this year. You may go through the whole school year isolated in your dorm room and at socially distanced meals, not going to the parties and club meetings and lecture halls that all of the other college freshmen in the history of college campuses have used to find their crowd and their niche. You may have to wait a whole year until you can start a “normal year,” using your second year of college to learn what everyone else in history has learned in their first year. But if it’s any consolation, all of the other freshmen in the world are stuck in this same Purgatory. How can you know if a place is right for you if you are not able to experience it as it usually is?” I’m sorry to say it, but you may just not get to decide anything big this year.”

I mentioned that conversation to my friend the other day when she was questioning the sanity of her sudden desire to retire. We both agreed that the crazy extremes of circumstances and emotions this year have left us feeling like our minds are on shaky ground and thus we ought to be suspicious of any major, Life-altering inclinations that flash through them. It has become difficult to trust our impulses, knowing that everything this year has been “unprecedented”—a word used more often this year than any other—and therefore “not normal.”

We have good reason to think that when we return to that normal—please tell me it is soon—that our inclinations and tastes will probably be more like they were before. Our current desires to overhaul our lives and the world around us will go from a boil to a simmer, maybe even to a cool. We will almost certainly go back to the same old, same old. Our minds and passions will go back on autopilot and cruise control. We will quickly shush those inner voices that suggest we shake it all up, whether that shake-up is a new job, a retirement, a new health care system, or a new way of policing our cities. Big ideas will be replaced by small ones again. Progress, if any, will be by baby steps again. You remember, the usual. These impulses—whether personal or societal–that have been allowed oxygen during these “unprecedented times” will crawl back under the rock they emerged from. If you just ignore them for a little while longer, you will get to that spot where you won’t have to be so suspicious of your inclinations. You will be safe and boring and uninspired again. We all will.

But should we ignore them?

What if the lockdowns resulting from the coronavirus pandemic made it crystal clear to you how little time you had actually been spending with your family and how important that time is, making you want to dramatically shift your schedule and perhaps your career path? What if the economic crisis made you aware of how thoroughly unfulfilling your luxury car or jewelry or fancy whatever is, making you want to sell off some things and simplify, giving more of your wealth to causes that you now see truly need it. What if the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor stories sparked a sudden realization of your privilege in this inequitable world, stirring up an activist streak in you that you had no idea existed? What if the Capitol insurrection of January 6^th and the exposure of the lies about the election fraud made you wake up to the reality of the damage your political beliefs have been doing in the real world for years, causing you to re-think not only your use of social media and usual news sources but also your political party? What if all of these cascading crises have actually made things not more fuzzy for you, but more clear? What if it took all of this to reveal your true values and priorities?

Maybe we haven’t had our foundation shaken but rather just had the artifice scraped off. Maybe it took all of this drama and uncertainty to make clear who we really are inside and what we want our lives to be truly about. Maybe all of these “out of nowhere” impulses to change ourselves and our world aren’t really so out of nowhere. Maybe they have been at our core, our foundation, the entire time, just covered up or blurred by all of the other superficial stuff that we thought we should be doing or the speed at which we’ve been going to try to keep up with all of our commitments. Isn’t there some quote–or at least a meme–about how life is not about finding yourself so much as it is about uncovering who you always were? Well, that is what I am getting at. It’s just so easy to get swept along by “normal life,” with all its busy-ness, and become numb to the signs from our soul about what is truly important to us and what resonates deep in our being. The panic of a global health scare, the guilt and grief of knowing a loved one is dying alone in a hospital, or the graphic video of one man calmly kneeling on another man’s neck as the life force slowly goes out of him—these things have the power to shake us to a different level and perhaps expose our Truths in a way that we can no longer deny. Trauma breeds uncertainty, no doubt, but maybe it also breeds clarity.

So, how do we tell which is which? How do we know if that newfound impulse to switch careers or run for City Council or lead a protest march or have a baby or get a divorce or buy a bookmobile or join the Peace Corps or get a dog–how do we know if these are the insecurity of a totally shaken core talking, and how do we know if they are a finally revealed core talking? Is there a different sound they make—a resonance—we can listen for to know if this is the thing to reject due to the extremity of the year rather than attend to because it is the revelation of our essence? How does one feel compared to the other?

Honestly, I don’t know. That is why I journal every day: to try to flesh it out. I fill up my pages with the rolling of ideas around in my head, taking them from different angles, ascertaining whether and how the impulse evolves over time, questioning my motivations and scouring my psyche for insecurities or unsatisfied longings. I attempt to look at myself in the mirror as clear-eyed as I possibly can, hoping to decipher which of these new impulses is an imposter out for a persuasive but fleeting flight of fancy, and which is my Truth revealing itself in a way that my eyes can finally see.

I think my friend is right to be suspicious of her motives for her recent, dramatic shift in outlook on her career. Not even necessarily the motives themselves—they should be mined for lessons for their own sake—but the sustainability of her motives. Will they keep when her job goes back to the normal that she loved for so many years? Maybe not. I am guessing most of our impulses and temptations from this year will not. Most, but not all. Truths have been revealed to us; I am sure of that. Whether or not we will do a good job of combing through the lot to dismiss the pretenders and find that priceless gem—or whether we even allow ourselves the courage to entertain the new ideas and inspirations at all—is a different matter. I happen believe in the power of those impulses; I think they are messages from our deeper levels. There is Magic in there. Sure, it must be sorted through, but true Magic is worth the labor. That is where the marrow of Life is. It is why, when my friend was verbally dismissing her retirement idea with, “Of course, now is the absolute worst time to be making any sort of meaningful Life decision,” I replied with, “Or maybe it’s the perfect time… .” Maybe. I am here to find out.

How about you? Do you trust yourself to make an important Life change at a time of multiple societal crises and a swirl of heavy emotions inside you? Open up your journal and try to get a sense of how steady your current grounding is to your True North? Generally speaking, how has your mental health been in recent months compared to other points in your life when things were more “normal”? How much more grief, anxiety, and sadness have you been dealing with this year? Have you found your mind feeling more foggy, your senses dulled, or your motivation lacking? Have you enjoyed things as much as you usually do, or are you one of the many experiencing anhedonia, the loss of the ability to feel pleasure? Do you like your job as well this year as you have in other years? Are you as engaged in your work and as fulfilled by your tasks? With all of that considered, how confident are you in your ability to make the wisest decisions on major Life issues this year (e.g. career or location change, family changes like having a child or getting a divorce)? How much more or less confident is that than you are in “normal” times—i.e., any time before 2020? Have you had to make some big decisions anyway, whether you wanted to or not? If so, how has it worked out so far? What fresh impulses or ideas have you had in the last year around bigger changes to your lifestyle? In what area have they popped up most frequently or strongly? Career path? Family life? Health of your lifestyle? Politics? Spirituality? Relationships? How have these inclinations and impulses been different than what you have felt in other, more stable times in your life? How do you interpret their meaning? Do you tend to take these new tastes or ideas seriously and follow through on them, or are you more skeptical of any big idea you have during these unprecedented times? Which new changes have you made? Which ideas did you disregard? Which ones will you keep on your radar until Life settles down a bit and returns to normalcy? What is the biggest, game-changing decision you have made in the last year? How has it worked out? Would you have made the same decision in normal times? Has all of this crisis, change, and chaos served to make your values and priorities more clear to you? How will this period change your Life in the long run? Will you be better for it, or will you carry the mental and emotional scars and be weighed down by them? If someone came to you now who has struggled emotionally through this period and announces a major Life-changing decision, would you caution them against making such a big move given the circumstances—essentially telling them to wait it out until it is easier to be clear-headed–or are you inclined to think that these times are good for clarifying priorities and are thus a great time to make a big change? Is your opinion on this different for yourself than it is for the general public? Leave me a reply and let me know: Is this age of cascading crises the absolute worst time to make a big Life decision, or is it the best?

Take care of yourself,

William

P.S. If today’s letter resonated with you, please share it. Together we can get through anything!

P.P.S. If this way of self-reflection suits you, consider buying my book, Journal Of YOU: Uncovering The Beauty That Is Your Truth, at your favorite online retailers. Namaste.

A Lost Year: Reflections On My Coronavirus Anniversary

“Reality continues to ruin my life.” –Bill Watterson, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” –J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Hello friend,

Last weekend, my daughter had her State Basketball Tournament. On our way home on Sunday afternoon, we got off the highway and were heading down the frontage road when she chimed in from the back seat: “Hey Dad, there’s the last restaurant we went to!” It took me a second to jar my memory, but finally it clicked in. She was right: there beside the road was the T.G.I.Fridays we had gone to with her teammates and their families on the day her State Tournament ended last year. The realization was a sobering one.

Last year.

With my daughter’s words, my mind was transported back to the first few weeks of March 2020. The quickly escalating tension and concern. The constant monitoring of the news for case updates and closures. The immediate fear of contracting the virus and losing loved ones. And what seemed like the worst at the time: the overwhelming sense of dread and inevitability as I watched the two biggest things occupying my mind head straight for each other like two runaway trains on the same track: my long-dreamt-about family beach vacation and the exponential spread of the coronavirus toward the point of national lockdown.

I remember how desperate I felt to get to that sunshine and warmth so I could immerse myself in the saltwater that always seems to make me whole again. I remember how irrational my thoughts became as the numbers rose to the point where it should have been obvious that the vacation was simply not going to happen. Things were beginning to shut down, and the dominoes kept falling. My son’s State Tournament, scheduled for the weekend after my daughter’s and just a couple days before our trip, was canceled. I begged the Universe for some loophole to appear that would allow us to go. I was willing things to be different, so obsessed was I with that vacation.

When I finally faced reality, I remember sitting on my bed, breaking the news to my kids. It was a heavy night in our house. They were so disappointed. We all were. It was terrible.

And that was only the beginning…

As we got deeper into March, a bizarre new way of life emerged at my house. School was shut down, only to be later restarted in a less-than-ideal way at home through devices. I scrounged for toilet paper, but otherwise we avoided stores, restaurants, and even our own jobs (which we were grateful to keep as others were losing theirs). It was a surreal new world to occupy, but the sacrifices made sense in order to quickly move out of the danger zone and back to our version of Normal.

From this view now, it seems odd that we imagined that the return to Normal would be quick. But we did.

One memory of those very early days that stands out in my mind is of watching a news show and hearing projections about the damage the novel coronavirus could cause if we—as regular citizens and our elected leaders–didn’t take the right steps early on in its days in America. I specifically remember them saying that it could potentially kill 70,000 people here. I thought, “NO WAY!!! That will NEVER happen! (But maybe the outlandish number will scare some people into behaving well for others in their communities.)” Seventy thousand. What a fantasy that sounds like now, as we recently blew by the half-a-million milestone and are still allowing 2,000 Americans to die every day from the virus, even as we continue to loosen our restrictions on gatherings and mask-wearing in many states. Oh, America…

After that crazy start, April arrived and seemed to stay for about 87 days. As an introvert, I felt like I had spent my whole life preparing for the forced isolation and quiet. It was just fine with me. At first, the “family time” and “break from organized activities” were relatively easy to sell to my kids. It grew less easy over time. They understood the seriousness of the virus and how each person’s behavior affected the entire community, so they accepted how disciplined my wife and I demanded us all to be. Still, seeing the unmasked neighbor kids wrestling in their yards with friends and other too-large neighborhood gatherings of adults made them wonder (justifiably) why other people got to cheat the rules. We can see now where all that cheating got us.

May was much like April—long and solitary—except that the warmer weather made getting out of the house for family walks and bike rides easier. We all appreciated the diversion. And outside, we could actually see other humans walking and riding as well, evidence that we were not alone on the planet, even if we couldn’t interact with them.

Summer is totally my season, and I had long been planning lots of adventures for my family for the 2020 Summer. We were going to take camping trips and many trips to the lake. To top it all off was to be a huge, cross-country roadtrip that included tons of sightseeing as well as visits with family and friends. The kids were the perfect age for it. It was to be one of those trips we would always talk about when we got together over the course of our lifetimes, forever family memories. NOPE! Canceled, canceled, canceled. Thanks to some family members committed to keeping safe, we were at least able to get to the lake to be with people we love. As I look back on the year, that time at the lake was the closest thing I have felt to Normal in the last twelve months. It was fantastic, and maybe something I will never take for granted again.

For my kids, other than their four-guest, outdoor birthday parties, if they wanted to spend time with friends, they had to stay on their bikes and talk while riding around the neighborhood. A far cry from the “just go out and play” days of the past. Childhood, interrupted.

Despite the rolling disappointment of the muted previous seasons, Autumn came around too soon, as it always does for me. Things like school and organized activities kind of halfway started, at least for some kids, including mine. It was like coming into the kitchen as a full batch of cookies is coming out of the oven but only being offered a single bite. Unsatisfying. But it was something. For the beggars we had all become over the previous several months, we clung to it desperately.

But then, of course, it ended. Schools and activities shut down again as cases and deaths skyrocketed. We were back to a fully muted life again, this time just more accustomed to it. Holidays that we have always celebrated heartily, like Halloween and Thanksgiving, came and went with just the four of us hanging out at home. The kids got lazy and addicted to screens in the absence of school and sports. We were determined to still get outdoors whenever we could, searching for energy and inspiration in a time when those were in short supply.

Winter continued the theme, as our lives seemed a bit frozen in time for a while as the virus kept us under its thumb. Slowly and tentatively, activities resumed. Eventually, games began to be played—fully masked and short of breath–and talk of a return to in-person schooling in some form. When school did resume recently, it was still the partial version. Half-schedules and no lockers for older kids, eating at your desk for the younger. There is no doubt the kids were glad to be back, but of course, it is not the same. Not as free. Not as fun. Just like everything else.

And now, here we are again in March. A full year into this COVID lifestyle and about to miss yet another Spring Break family beach vacation. I cannot think about this past year without shaking my head. It is involuntary. I cannot even begin to explain how deeply disappointed and frustrated I am with everything about this situation. The fact that we are a year out from the first deaths in this country and are still erasing 2,000 more people every day just makes me sick to my stomach. The fact that I have essentially lost a full year in my fleeting life feels thoroughly wasteful. I feel like I have been robbed. I’m sad about it. But I am also angry. I am sick and tired of shaking my head. At spineless or inept politicians failing their moral duties. At yet another milestone marker in cases or deaths. At people in the grocery store with their masks down below their noses. Or people going on vacation. Or going to bars and restaurants. Or refusing to get vaccinated. Or leaving the house when they are sick. Or complaining about how tough the guidelines and restrictions are when they aren’t even following them anyway. My neck is sore from all of the shaking, I swear.

Let me be clear: I am well aware that my family and I have been extremely blessed during the entire pandemic and over the course of this awful year. We have been healthy and connected: never got the virus and didn’t kill each other. We have had paychecks and food on the table. We are lucky, and I am deeply grateful for that. I have made the best of a best of a bad situation. And I can honestly say that I have been happy all year.

But not fulfilled. Not enjoying my work the way I normally would. Not getting all of my itches scratched for adventure, travel, laughter, and human connection. Not free. Basically, just not living my best life. Pandemic living is just so awfully dimmed and muted. I resent the dullness of it, how little there is to look forward to. It is so unlike glorious, regular Life.

That stinks. Because like I said, I am not getting any younger, and my years are flying by. I don’t have any extras to just throw away anymore. There is too much I want to do and feel, and too much I want to share with my kids while they are still kids.

So, I feel like I’ve been cheated this past year. Every day going forward from today in which it still feels unwise to travel and play and hug and look deeply into a friend’s eyes while we share our deepest thoughts, I will feel even more cheated. And not simply because there was a global pandemic. Bad things happen; I get that. Things don’t always go my way. So yeah, the coronavirus has been a bite in the butt. But I feel more cheated by my fellow countrymen. My neighbors and co-workers, my family and friends. And yes, my elected leaders. Collectively, we Americans have behaved horribly regarding COVID, completely failing the exam. Our federal policy was nonexistent (though I must say we did well in developing a vaccine quickly). Our state policies were not strong enough. But mostly, it was just the regular folks in our communities—our friends and neighbors–who were unwilling to sacrifice for one another. As my co-worker likes to say, ”They never should have told Americans that wearing a mask (and wearing it correctly) was to protect others. They should have led with, ‘The mask is only to save yourself.’” Other countries were amazing. There were plenty of examples to look to. The keys to beating the virus back were not secret. We just didn’t do it. And we are still, a year later, not doing it. That really makes me mad. Sad, too, because I hate to think so poorly of my country and my countrymen. But I do. Because we could have beaten this thing by now. We should have beaten this thing by now. It disgusts me that we haven’t. And that I am still counting. I am thoroughly disappointed. I have been that way all year long.

How about you? What are your strongest memories and takeaways from your year dealing with the coronavirus pandemic? Open up your journal and your heart, and wander back through the last twelve months in your mind. Go ahead, begin at the beginning. What was happening in your life in March of 2020 as things started to get real with the virus? What were the first things in your world to get disrupted? Which plans did you have to cancel? What was your level of fear and tension around the virus itself? How upset were you with the sudden changes in your lifestyle? Do you have a personality that flows well with change and chaos? Which aspects of “lockdown” living did you appreciate at the time? Did you miss your routine? Your loved ones? Stimulation? How was your job affected? In those early weeks of the lockdown, how long did you expect your life to be significantly disrupted by the virus? How many people would you have guessed would die in your country? Did those expectations of length and severity color the way you have viewed the pandemic the rest of the way? At what point in the year did you feel optimism about the possibility of the virus getting under control soon? Mid-Summer? Early Autumn? Ever? How disappointed are you in the way things have gone? What would you say is your distribution of disappointment, anger, frustration, umbrage, fear, and sadness? How wildly does that distribution vary from day to day? At whom do you direct the bulk of your ire regarding the duration and depth of this fiasco? Elected officials? God/the Universe? Regular folks not following the basic safety rules? Does your answer vary from day to day on that one as well? When I look back now over this letter to you and how I have described life in the last year, I see words like muted, disappointed, desperate, bizarre, dimmed, wasteful, sick-and-tired, frozen in time, tentative, slow, quiet, solitary, halfway, sad, and surreal. What adjectives come to your mind when you think about your lifestyle of the past year? Ten or twenty years from now, how do you think you will look back on this time? Will this have been the worst year of your life? Where are you with it right now? Does the presence of the vaccine, even if you haven’t received it yet, make you more impatient about getting back to the life you once had? What are the things you will try to keep from this COVID lifestyle? If you could give some advice to the person you were one year ago about how to make the best of the year that would come, what would you say? If you are like me and mostly feel like you have been robbed of a year on Earth, what will you do differently when we finally emerge from the pandemic to either make up for lost time or just make the best use of the time you have left? What is the most important lesson you have learned? Leave me a reply and let me know: What will you take away from your year with the coronavirus?

Onward and upward,

William

P.S. If this letter resonated with you today, please share it with your community. We must learn in order to grow!

P.P.S. If you like to examine your life both broadly and deeply, consider purchasing my book, Journal Of YOU: Uncovering The Beauty That Is Your Truth, at your favorite online retailers. Namaste.

Dear Mr. President: A Note To The New Guy In The White House

“Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends–honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism–these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths.” –Barack Obama

“The people of the United States are one of the people I most admire in the world. The only thing I don’t understand is why a country that manages to do so well cannot do better in choosing its president.” –Gabriel García Márquez

Hello friend,

I suppose every writer shares the compulsion to have their voice heard. We feel we have something important to say, something that needs an audience. Sometimes that is an audience of one. I love letters. That is probably no surprise to you, but it is so true. I like the format. There is a carefully selected audience who is both greeted and bid farewell. It is understood that what falls in between those salutations is quite intentionally stated. The writer means it. It is thoughtful, unlike the mind(less) vomit that fills so many social media feeds. I know it is not as fast as a Tweet or a text, but it means a million times more. At least, that’s how I think of the letter. I have one friend who still writes me real emails—letters—occasionally, and it fills me with all the best feelings every time. I love her for it, and I love investing all my heart and soul into the response. The relationship feels intentional. That is everything to me.

By some strange twist of Fate, I have not become the global icon I dreamed of becoming when I was a kid. I lack the status and connections I imagined I might have by this point in my life. Somehow, that harsh reality has not deterred my ambition to secure the occasional audience with the big shots. I simply have these exchanges in my imagination instead. Musicians. Educators. Film directors. Writers. Scientists. Activists. Yogis. Healers. And yes, even politicians. (Okay, maybe especially politicians.)

Four years ago at this time, in a letter to you, I ruminated on the new President and the direction things seemed to be headed. I was definitely concerned. Several months later, still in President Trump’s first year in office, I wrote him an open letter to share my by-then-heightened concerns on his presidency. I am sure we all had strong opinions on the matter, as the presidency suddenly seemed to consume all of the airspace and hover over us every day. I wanted to be clear—to me and to him–where I stood.

Now that we have a new President, it seems only right to give him a piece of my mind, too. While in the literal sense, every moment is an unprecedented one–no two moments have ever been exactly the same—I think we can all agree that, in our lifetimes anyway, there has not been another era of political drama and intrigue quite like the one we are in right now. “Unprecedented” doesn’t feel even remotely exaggerated. The country could go a number of different ways from here. And though I have no doubt that President Biden has many wise and experienced advisors, it wouldn’t hurt to hear from one of his constituents. I don’t know anyone more opinionated than me, so why not? This is what I have to say:

Dear Mr. President,

Just be decent. You know: sane, kindhearted, generous, thoughtful, altruistic, inclusive, wise, optimistic, empathetic, patriotic, gracious, and just. Just be a decent human and care about us for four years. That’s it.

No. Sorry, that’s not it; that doesn’t do it. But honestly, that is my first impulse, Mr. President. That’s what jumps to my mind when I think about what I want you to do right now. I know, I know, that’s not enough, and that would be shortchanging your potential for greatness—not to mention that I am WAY more demanding than that—but I also don’t want to downplay what some solid Goodness could do to salve the wounds in the soul of our beloved country right now. I think you know that, so I won’t spend too much more time on it. Or maybe I will. Anyway, PLEASE be that soothing grandfather that the country is silently begging for. That may be the most important thing I can ask at the moment.

But it’s not all. As much as I need you to simply BE good, I am going to need you to DO good, too. Thanks to the voters of Georgia, your party controls the Congress as well and thus has the ability to do big things, to make major structural changes in a country desperately in need of them. If you fail to seize this opportunity and merely be a decent, gracious man, I will be as disappointed in you as I have been in most of your predecessors. Perhaps more so.

What do I need you to do? Let’s start with climate change and environmental issues. It was a nice symbolic gesture that you rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement on your first day, but I need to see some aggressive legislation and investment that will both create lots of new jobs and decrease our greenhouse gas emissions. Similarly, after the last administration, you have a lot of catching up to do to restore credibility to the Environmental Protection Agency and to secure our public lands. I understand that climate change is a global issue and that one country’s efforts can be nullified by the negligence of other countries, but there is no excuse for America to fail to be a leader in this urgent matter. And even though this is not the most exciting topic for the majority of the electorate, this could ultimately be your most important legacy. Fortune favors the bold. I expect you to rise to the occasion.

Obviously, the coronavirus and its accompanying financial crisis are the issues slamming you in the face right now, and they will require the combination of bold proposals, wise judgment, and nimble adjustments to the fluid situations. I encourage you to go the exact opposite way of your predecessor: embrace the science, tell us the truth, take responsibility for federal government-managed testing and tracing, provide ample funds to local and state governments so they can perform their roles, and provide enough human and financial resources to make the logistics of mass vaccination as efficient as possible. I am past relying on my fellow citizens to do the right thing with masks and social distancing; I need you to get the vaccination in our arms and save us all, including those unwilling to do right by their communities. I am less certain of all the right moves you should make on the financial side of the crisis. I know the checks-for-everyone is kind of an easy, popular band-aid, but my main concern is targeting the people who have been hardest hit by the pandemic. I want you to do all you can for small businesses, for the people who have lost their jobs (and the health care tied to those jobs), and for those in danger of being evicted. As a nation, we have already failed this crisis quite miserably. The best thing you can do is get us out of the woods quickly and land us on our feet. Be the janitor and clean up our mess.

I need you to address and constantly re-address issues of equity and racial justice. This is one that you simply cannot back away from. I am pleased so far with your willingness to speak phrases like “White supremacy” and “Black lives matter.” I have been impressed with the diversity of your Cabinet nominees and advisers. But it is high time we dig in with some policymaking. Voting rights. Prison reform. Investment in infrastructure, green space, and schools in areas inhabited by people of color. Loans for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and first-time homebuyers. Tuition reimbursements. Anti-bias and curriculum reform in schools. Building a pipeline for teachers of color. Pathways to citizenship. Food justice. And on and on and on…. Get to work!

Health care. I know you didn’t campaign on a universal healthcare/Medicare-for-all platform, so I am not holding my breath here. But hey, this is my letter, so here goes. I really want you to start talking about health care as a right and begin to explain to America in good old “Joe from Scranton” language how much better our overall quality of life would be if we could all count on cradle-to-grave care in the same way we count on public schools, parks, and roads. Perhaps in your push to move the age for Medicare down to 60, you will see that the logic of your argument extends to any age. It is an embarrassment that America does not provide health care to all of its citizens. And let’s not pretend that it doesn’t affect poor people and people of color disproportionally. Even if you don’t get us all the way there, please move us in the direction of EVERY OTHER WEALTHY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD (you know, those countries that, no matter how hard they were hit by the coronavirus pandemic, not one of their citizens lost health care coverage). Bend that arc, Mr. President. I beg you.

I could go on and on with issues small and large that I want you to act on. Statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington, DC. The Supreme Court. Gun control. The filibuster. Homelessness. Campaign financing. The Electoral College. Term limits. I have strong opinions on just about everything. But which ones you choose to take on and in whichever order you choose, I hope you will do it with the utmost class and grace. Whether you are fulfilling all of my wildest policy dreams or falling short (as all of your predecessors have so far), I ask that Decency be one of your trademarks. Be the kind of leader I would like my children to look up to. We need that right now. We need you.

I’ll be honest with you, Mr. President. You weren’t my first choice in the Democratic primaries. You were pretty far down my list, frankly. Though you seem like a nice guy, your record is much too centrist for my liberal tastes. But I will tell you something: I have come to believe you are the right person for this moment. I think you have it in you to be the leader we need right now. I believed you when you said, in your inauguration speech, that your soul is in it. I sure hope so. We need every ounce of Goodness that you have. At any rate, I will be cheering for you, understanding that your success is our country’s success.

Godspeed,

William

How about you? What would you like to say to the new President? Open up your journal and unload your thoughts. Is it comfortable to you to write in the letter format? Does it feel weird to write a letter you aren’t formally sending? Does it free you up to say things you might not otherwise dare to? I hope you put it all out there for this one. My guess is that your letter will look a lot different than mine. But how? Is your letter more confrontational? What specific issues would you like to challenge the President about on his way into office? Things he has stood for in the past or campaigned on? Things you assume he is planning to change from the last President? What about the other side: what specific issues do you want to encourage him to take up? Which of the handful of crises that America is dealing with right now—pandemic, economy, racial justice, climate change, etc.—would you like the new administration to prioritize? Do you believe the President has any choice but to tackle them all simultaneously? What things would be a waste of his time and energy? Would you share in your letter some personal stories of you or your loved ones and how his upcoming presidency could impact you? Would you like to address his character and the example he can set for children, particularly in light of the last President? How much of what you would say is driven by whether you voted for him or not? Do you have a different list of demands depending upon which party the President belongs to? How can your words help him? If you are mostly angry about his arrival in the presidency, how can you find words that are both a release for you but also helpful to him? Do you think there is anything you could say to bring about a positive change? I dare you to try! Leave me a reply and let me know: What would you like to say to the new President?

Lift your voice,

William

P.S. If this letter resonated with you, please share it with your community. Let us empower one another to speak and be heard!

P.P.S. If this way of reflection appeals to your sensibilities, consider buying my book, Journal Of YOU: Uncovering The Beauty That Is Your Truth, at your favorite online retailers. Namaste.

Thanks, 2020! Personal Firsts, Bests, & Discoveries From A Year Like No Other

“Life is about accepting the challenges along the way, choosing to keep moving forward, and savoring the journey.” –Roy T. Bennett, A Light In The Heart

“The only way that we can live, is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we can become exposed is if we throw ourselves out into the open. Do it. Throw yourself.” –C. JoyBell C.

Hello friend,

I felt like a 90-year-old who couldn’t figure out how to get the remote control to play the movie. I was on the phone with the Apple guy, stressed out and flummoxed, trying to learn how I could get my CDs to play in the new laptop I was considering buying. “Why in the world wouldn’t it come with a disc drive? How will I load all of my CDs into iTunes? How will I burn the next album I rent from the library? Surely I’m not alone here, am I, young genius person? How else will I listen to my precious music????” “Umm, well sir, you could just stream it.” “Pay for music? No way! No….well, how would that work?”

Suspicious but intrigued by this sorcery he was explaining, I hung up the phone and called a couple of my friends who actually live in the modern world. When one told me that he subscribes to Spotify Premium, I asked him how he plays all of his CDs that were the soundtrack of our many cross-country roadtrips a few decades ago (you know, when CDs were the newest, coolest technology). “I sold them all on eBay,” he said, crushing my soul in one sentence. How could you just dispose of those priceless archives of your life??? So, I called my other modern-yet-more-nostalgic friend. She guided me through my fears, starting with a cost analysis: the cost of Apple Music for a month is the same as the cost of one CD. But how do I get new albums when they are released? I still need to buy them, right? “They’re free. They just show up on the release date.” I didn’t believe her. “Okay, name me a new album you would want?” Indigo Girls: Look Long. She looked it up: “Yep, it’s there. I can listen to it right now if I want. And anything else I want. Anything.”

I was like a living, breathing version of the “Mind Blown” emoji. I was stupefied by this new reality. No CDs? My whole world felt like it was coming apart. But that stupor only lasted for a few minutes, the part when I was intellectualizing it all, thinking through plan options and credit card numbers. After that, when I actually activated the free trial, well, then my whole world felt like it was opening up. Wide! All of this blessed inspiration was suddenly right at my fingertips. I couldn’t get it in my ears fast enough. Before the day was over, I had created several new playlists and downloaded hundreds of albums. I was the proverbial kid in a candy store. Honestly, as someone who is absolutely nutty about music, it felt like the discovery of a lifetime. I was in Heaven! Just so cool.

That day, lying on that hammock with my headphones on and my devices all aglow, with that music filling up my entire soul, was a total game-changer. It was mid-2020—the height of the coronavirus pandemic, social unrest over racial injustice, and a crumbling economy—but all of those things that have become the year’s headlines suddenly had to share space in my heart and mind with something new and beautiful and, well, cool. I don’t think a day has passed in the ensuing months that I haven’t been on Apple Music, granting myself that little space to both escape from this world and to be inspired to build a better one. It is one of the things I will always remember 2020 for, and probably the one for which I will always be most grateful.

But it’s definitely not the only cool thing I learned or tried this year. It’s not even the only eye-opener for me in the world of technology and media. No, I got even further out of my old man mode when we finally cut the cable cord at my house. My wife had been cursing the cable company for years. I always watched the least amount of anything in my family, so I had no opinions. However, when we got Netflix and Prime Video a couple years ago, I was intrigued by this streaming thing but just never found much time to watch anything. When doing my cardio workouts in the gym, I always read books on my tablet. However, when the gyms closed in March and my workouts moved home, watching Netflix as I rode the treadmill became my new thing. I loved it. Later, when we finally cut ties with the cable company and took on Hulu, Sling, Disney+, ESPN+, and Apple TV+, I was in the mode of wanting more material for my workout hours. It was a revelation! Bravo, streaming services!

There is really some wonderful stuff out there. The artists are clearly in full bloom with all of these new outlets. I have found that I love documentaries. I have watched several good ones on different topics—from Bill Gates to Greta Thunberg–but find that I keep coming back to films that cover music and musicians, particularly those who were involved in the revolution of the 1960s. I just finished two fascinating ones about The Band—Once Were Brothers and The Last Waltz—but have also been captivated by pieces about Keith Richards, the artists who lived in Los Angeles’s Laurel Canyon in the sixties, and Sam Cooke, among others. I have dozens more on my watchlists.

Of the non-documentary things I have watched, a few of my favorites from this year are When They See Us, Schitt’s Creek, and The Trial Of The Chicago 7. There are so many more that intrigue me, but I know my chances of getting to them are slim. I am grateful for what I have seen, and grateful to 2020 for opening my eyes to so many wonderful works of art.

Whenever I watch a movie or TV show, though, it comes with a measure of guilt that I am ignoring the many brilliant books in the world. I did, however, find one released this Autumn that has stayed with me in the weeks since I have finished it. It is Greenlights, by the actor Matthew McConaughey. I was drawn to it because I learned that, like me, he has kept journals for all of his adult life, and the book used many of the insights he gained in writing them over the years. I have never been particularly drawn to McConaughey as an actor and so was otherwise skeptical going in, but I found myself captivated by his tales and the wisdom he drew from them. It is my favorite literary discovery of this year.

While I doubt I will ever be anyone’s favorite literary discovery, I did have a Journal of You highlight this Summer, albeit coming not from something I wish I had to write about. By many times over, more people than ever showed up to read and share my piece called “But I’m Not a Racist!” And Other Things We White Folks Need To Do Better. It came on the heels of the George Floyd murder, as the protests were getting into full swing. I certainly appreciated the positive feedback and was glad I could contribute to something so important.

I never know when something I write will resonate, but that moment in American history seemed to sweep so many of us up with it, and rightly so. In addition to writing a couple of pieces on it, the George Floyd murder brought me to another significant first in my life: my first real protest. I wasn’t in the throngs of people downtown getting teargassed or anything so dramatic, but I did bring my children to a local event where we got to lift our signs and our voices in a show of solidarity with our community against police violence and racial injustice. It was moving for me and hopefully something of a precursor for more social activism, both for me in my later years and for my children for the rest of their long and precious lives.

I spent more of 2020 than any other year on the seat of a bicycle. That seems a strange record, but it is true. With fewer “play” options for my kids, we took so many more rides on the streets of our town. I also got more into mountain biking at local trails; that was tremendously invigorating. Then, as Fate would have it, I sustained an injury that would not allow me to walk, run, or play sports. That would normally drive me to the nuthouse, but in a stroke of luck, I discovered that I was still able to ride a bicycle. Early mornings in Summer and Autumn were spent pedaling out the miles on the quiet streets in the surrounding towns. It was a delightful release to drink in that fresh air and still be able to sweat amidst my other physical limitations. When the days shortened and chilled, I got myself an indoor bike to sweat away the Winter. While I miss the fresh air and the lakes and trees, the workout is fantastic and much-needed. Perhaps I won’t need the riding so much in other years when my body is more cooperative, but I am so grateful to have found it and made it a big part of my life.

Speaking of that fresh air and those lakes and trees, my last, best discovery of this year was about spending time outside and having more adventures. Maybe this one qualifies more as a re-covery, since I have had it and lost it more than once in my many years on this planet. I feel like the year has left me more committed than ever to design my remaining years around being outdoors and exploring the beauty of Mother Earth. Most of my social media scrolling this year has been on the pages of National Parks and travel sites. I don’t think a single day has gone by when I haven’t added to my itinerary and fantasies for my next trip to Glacier country in Northwest Montana, and I have plotted adventures all across the American West, from Utah’s “Mighty Five” parks to the Sierra Nevadas of California and the Cascade Range in the Northwest. I have developed plans for overnights and weekends near home as well, with lots of hiking and sleeping in the pine-fresh air to the sounds of the forest and rippling streams.

Even as much of a Winter-hater as I am, my Christmas gifts this week included new snowshoes, trekking poles, fleeces, and a backpack (and I am even planning my next car and its necessary adventure accessories). I am more determined than ever to be an active participant in the outdoor activities of every season. Maybe I was coming to that anyway in my life’s evolution, or maybe 2020’s message of “Stay Home & Cover Your Breath” only served to stir up my natural resistance to being contained, or maybe it is some combination of the two. In any case, I now know in a deeper place that being in Nature is one of my greatest inspirations and an absolutely necessary fuel to get me through the rest of the world’s obligations and nonsense. It is both my escape and my spiritual home. I am relieved to know that so clearly now.

I guess most discoveries and favorites are like that: something outside of us—music, books, blogs, bicycles, and mountain streams—lights up something inside of us. They give our existence meaning and value. They buoy us against the storms of Life and make historically bad years seem pretty darn good after all. They are the source of our Gratitude and thus our Happiness. I am deeply grateful that there are so many of these points of light in my life, no matter the year. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying I want to do 2020 all over again! But I know that it brought me many gifts, and I refuse to look past them just because they arrived on the same train as COVID, racism, and political folly. I am grateful for this year and the many new things I know and love because I lived through it.

How about you? What are the coolest things you learned or tried in 2020? Open up your journal and your spirit and expose what the light let in this year. First, what new things did you learn? If you had extra time in the house, did you pick up any home improvement skills (e.g. Marie Kondo organizing, carpentry, plumbing)? How about personal improvement skills, like learning a language or a musical instrument? Did you learn how to be a teacher? Did you learn some new technology tricks, like how to Zoom? Did anything blow your mind? What did you try for the first time this year? New foods? New fitness routines? Online grocery shopping? Something outdoorsy? Did you do anything social justice-related this year that you had never previously been so moved to do, like a protest or a sign in your yard? How about with politics: did the extreme divisions among this year’s election issues and candidates spur you to participate in ways that you hadn’t before? Were most of the new things you tried in 2020 related to things specific to this year—being on lockdown, COVID, Trump drama, etc.—or were they more random and could have happened any year? Which of them will you continue with even when things return to whatever “normal” looks like to you? Now to the Arts. What musical styles or artists did you discover this year, whether they were new or just new to you? What was the best thing you watched on television? What were your favorite 2020 movies? Books? Did you try anything unique to get Art in unconventional ways, like attending a virtual theatre performance, concert, or museum tour? What else did you love? Did you have any personal bests this year? Did you excel at anything at your work? Did you improve upon a hobby or passion project? Were you a better friend, sibling, parent, co-worker, or ally? Did you find you were great at the self-care this year demanded? Finally, what did you discover about yourself this year? What issue or passion might you have had only a hint at before this year but now have a clear position on? Do you have a core belief that has changed? Do you know what you want to do more of (and less of) going forward? Are you clear that there are some people in your life who you need to distance yourself from? Are there others you would like to cultivate a deeper relationship with? How have you grown in the last year? Leave me a reply and let me know: What are the coolest things you have done and discovered in 2020?

Seek out the light,

William

P.S. If this resonated with you, please share it with your community. Let’s chase the bright spots together!

P.P.S. If this way of reflection and introspection appeals to your way of being, consider buying my book Journal Of YOU: Uncovering The Beauty That Is Your Truth, at your favorite online retailers. Namaste.

Reasons To BE THANKFUL

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” –Marcel Proust

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.” –Alphonse Karr, A Tour Round My Garden

“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.” –Eckhart Tolle

Hello friend,

Happy Thanksgiving! I arose this morning with a welcome lightness in my heart. The weather here promises to allow for a pleasant walk down by the lake before I plop my butt down at the table (and the sofa, and the rocker, etc.) to gorge upon the culinary delights of the day. I am going to enjoy this holiday! After the all-time clunker that 2020 has been, I feel like I deserve that.

I mean, just think of all the things we have been through this year….NO! STOP! DON’T THINK OF THAT STUFF! That is not what this day is for. We don’t need to revisit that stuff today; it will be here waiting for us tomorrow. Today, let’s just focus on the good things in our lives, the things we really ought to be grateful for on a daily basis but sometimes forget to acknowledge because they are so much in our faces, so much the wallpaper of our lives. In this year when it is better that we not have a huge celebratory gathering, let’s muster up some huge Gratitude anyway.

I truly believe that Gratitude is the mother of Happiness. The way I see it, you just can’t get to any real, lasting Happiness unless you can acknowledge the blessings that surround you and permeate all that you do and all that you are. The ability to find a way to Gratitude no matter how your life looks is a rare and priceless gift, one that we should all strive for. I say we should begin today. Any day is a good day to choose Gratitude, but TODAY is always the best one. Not because it is Thanksgiving—which is a nice reminder, though, I admit—but rather because it is TODAY. NOW is always the best time to be more than who we have been. I want that. So, let us begin.

In this year when it was unwise to mingle outside of your household, I am so grateful for the three other people under my roof: my wife and kids. While we all have our moments of mess in all of these months of isolation, I can honestly say I would choose these guys to stay with if I had to do it all over again (which I might!). We are a team. A good one.

I am thankful for the fresh air and the ability to get outside and breathe it in. This year has had so much of “There’s nothing to do,” but my restless mind has been saved on so many days simply by getting out the door and feeling the air on my skin and in my lungs. Whether it is on a walk or bike ride around my neighborhood or swaying in my hammock as I stare up into the big trees and open sky, the option to get out and breathe it all in is often everything to me. I am grateful every time I am out there.

I am grateful for the other people in my life: my extended family, my friends, my co-workers, my social media community, and you. For the ones who have been my allies, either silently and vocally, I am more thankful than ever for them this year. And though some of us don’t always see eye-to-eye and have needed even more boundaries this year than ever to maintain our sanity—loving from a healthy distance has become a well-practiced skill—I am glad to know they are out there, and I truly wish the best for them. I am so pleased—and relieved, really—that after all of the political drama of this year and the (not always spoken) tension and strain it has brought into so many of my relationships, that I can sincerely wish them all health and happiness (and, of course, a more empathetic, liberal worldview!). I guess sometimes a simple lack of grudges and bitterness is a gift. Blessings come with many different faces; today I am thankful for all of them and the lessons they keep teaching me.

I am grateful for my health. I know people who have had COVID and been relatively unscathed by it, and I know people who have died from it, and many variations in between. It scares me, and I am so thankful that no one inside my house has had it. But it is not just the absence of COVID that I feel grateful for. I have struggled with an injury for much of this year that has limited my ability to move freely and to enjoy many of the things I love to do. That has made me acutely aware of the things I can still do and has made me grateful for each improvement I have made on my way back to health. I am truly delighted to be able to do the things I can do.

I am grateful for writing. Both my daily journal entries and these occasional letters to you provide me with some much-needed clarity and sanity. That is certainly the case this year, but I can say the same every year. It is my escape from “reality” but simultaneously my access to Truth. I am thankful for it every day.

Lastly, I am grateful for days like today that are meant to give me both the time and the reminder to be thankful. While it is nice, on an ordinary day of the year, to bring my awareness into a moment and find myself smiling or feeling a wave of positive energy all around me, it is so much better when I can extend that awareness to the reasons for my Joy and for the lightness in my being. This day is all about that awareness. It reminds me of the things that I need to seek out more of in my life. I appreciate both the reminder and the lightness of being.

How about you? What are you grateful for today? Open up your journal and your heart. What comes to mind first when you think about your greatest blessings on this day? Is it a person, an object, something you do, a state of being, or something else? Are you aware of your gifts often enough throughout the year, or is this the day that makes you fully conscious? Of the things you are most grateful for, what can you do throughout the year to bring more of them into your life? How can you become more grateful? A Gratitude journal? Prayer? A Gratitude jar? Regular journaling? Is it just a matter of changing your lenses and focusing on the right thing, the roses rather than the thorns? What method will you start with? Leave me a reply and let me know: What are your reasons to be thankful today?

Happy Thanksgiving,

William

P.S. If this resonated with you today, please share it. Spread Gratitude!

P.P.S. If this way of questioning yourself and discovering your light appeals to you, consider buying my book, Journal of YOU: Uncovering The Beauty That Is Your Truth, at your favorite online retailer. Namaste.

Have You Made Any Lemonade From All Of These 2020 Lemons?

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” –Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’ One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger—but recognize the opportunity.” –John F. Kennedy

Hello friend,

I am SO HAPPY to connect with you again! It feels like forever since I have written to you. I love to write these letters. I love the whole process: what I learn about myself in the exploration, the struggle to piece together the right combination of words to make my idea clear to you, the ecstatic blend of calm certainty and dancing butterflies I feel deep down in my chest and my soul from the knowledge that I am acting on my purpose, the joy and relief of hitting the “Publish” button and seeing my labor of love go out into the world to mingle with your beautiful mind, and the connection I feel with you as a result. All of that is everything to me. I love to write. I am so grateful to be in your world, to share space with you today. This is where I am supposed to be.

So, why haven’t I been here more often lately? That is the logical question. In Pandemic America, after all, the story goes that Time itself has slowed down, and with it, all of our lives. We have the headspace and the minutes and hours (and days and weeks and months….) to collect ourselves, to nest, to make our spaces feel more like home, to set our priorities right, and to finally do all of the things we have been longing to do for ourselves. As disruptive as the coronavirus has been to our normal—our economy, our relationships, our work, our fun, our faces—it supposedly gave us this gift of a “RESET,” the time to get ourselves right and clarify who and what we love.

This is why I have been racked with guilt and frustration that I haven’t been writing more over the past several months. This would seem to have been the ideal time to churn out letters to you every week like I used to. After all, Journal of You is about digging into our own existence and coming to understand where we have come from, where our passions lie today, and where we see ourselves going in the moments we have left on this Earth. This should be our opportunity to nail that stuff down, right? A chance at complete clarity, at least for a moment in our otherwise-busy lives. Somehow, I have failed to capitalize on this most golden of opportunities.

I suppose it was some combination of laziness, busy-ness, and distractedness. That natural slowing down during the earliest, “lockdown” phase of the pandemic seemed to slow everything down, including my ambition. I was enjoying the relative quiet and solitude of my home and family, content to soak up their company and the extra moments without errands and commutes. The urgency to write it all down just wasn’t there. Then came the urgency to do the other things that are typically much more neglected than my writing. Like so many other people, I took on all sorts of home improvement projects, becoming an apprentice painter, landscaper, and organization guru. With my time going into those tasks, the hours allotted to writing diminished. Then there was the issue of headspace. For so much of the last half a year, my brain seemed to split its thoughts three ways: pandemic, racial injustice, and governmental/political nonsense. All three are psychologically and emotionally draining in their own ways, leaving precious little energy for regular functioning, much less for creative expression.

I found myself at the breakfast table this week reading up on the wildfires currently devastating the American West. The whole thing is absolutely heartbreaking to me on so many levels: the loss of life (human, animal, plant, and more), the loss of Beauty, the loss of habitat, the loss of personal property and the priceless feelings of “home” for so many, the loss of jobs and dreams, the recklessness of human-created climate change, the addition of even more greenhouse gases from the fires themselves, and all of the trauma caused, to name just a few. The thought that rose up from inside me was, “My God, I hope we are learning something from this, at least. There has to be some good that comes from it. Something!”

It came out like a plea, I suppose, an imploring of the people of the world to find a way to do better as a result of this catastrophe, to create a silver lining from these darkest of clouds. To make lemonade from this overabundance of lemons we seem to be tripping over wherever we step.

Just think about these last few months and the swirl of awfulness that has joined our already-tense and divided country. The gross mishandling of the coronavirus and subsequent spiraling death toll and economy. The very public murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor (to name but a few) and the subsequent protests across in cities big and small across the country. Unemployment and food insecurity for so many. The deaths of social justice giants John Lewis and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The continued lies and indecency of the President. The approach of a contentious election. The fires.

These are all things that have the potential, individually, to knock you down and leave you feeling lost and unmoored from your moral and emotional home base. They can also, individually, leave you deeply bitter and lacking faith in our country, its institutions, and its people. They have the potential, individually, to make you want to shut down, to retreat, to go into self-preservation mode. With powers of destruction that strong individually, when taken together, in a series of relentless, cascading blows one on top of another and often simultaneously, the cumulative effect of 2020 has proven devastating. The countless memes it has generated are a reliable testament to that (e.g “Cue the murder hornets!” and “Apocalypse Bingo”).

In a year when so much seems so wrong, the natural reaction feels like it ought to be to simply weather the storm, try to not get sick or committed to the asylum. Dodge the bullet. Just try to wait it out and hope to begin dreaming, loving, and achieving again next year. Save self-improvement for 2021. That makes sense. “To everything, there is a season,” right? This year definitely feels biblical, so maybe this is just the season of our lives to hunker down and ride it out, having faith that next year must be better.

That idea soothes me. It placates me, softening my usual urgency for personal and global improvement, lets me off the hook for my recent lack of achievement and production. My guilt is assuaged. I appreciate the pass for 2020.

But I can’t help being suspicious of it. I tend to disbelieve any philosophy that tells me it is okay to stop learning, growing, and making my life and my world better. Sure, I understand that our ambition ebbs and flows along our journey, and I try to listen to my intuition about how hard I need to push in a given season. And I am a huge fan of self-care and filling up one’s tank when it is running low so you can face the challenges of the present and the future. On top of that, I realize that some of these blows that 2020 continues to deliver require true grieving—they are just that painful–which takes its own time. Still, my internal dashboard is always measuring for Progress. I am naturally monitoring myself for signs of growth and surveying the world around me for ways I can both use my talents for good and be enriched. I am also naturally optimistic, so I live with the assumption that all situations can lead to better ones, and Growth is ours to claim.

With those traits in my nature, I should not be surprised at my response to the wildfires in the West (which are sending their smoke across the country as though to remind us that we are all in this together and no one gets away clean). Even in my deepest despair, I cling to the idea that we must learn and grow from our situations.

But have I? This year, I mean. Have I hunkered down and simply tried to survive—which may be enough, honestly, depending on how close to home each crisis has struck—or have I found any ways for these calamities to improve my life or the world around me?

I would say I have done very little directly for the world (e.g. I protested for racial justice and wrote some pieces, but I definitely didn’t write often enough), but I have improved myself in subtle but certain ways. Much of it has come in the form of solidifying my priorities and values. The pandemic, with its extra time to think and the need to stay in one place with only the people in my household, has served to thrust those values and priorities into bold relief, forcing an examination and a culling of the excesses and the things that just don’t feel authentic and uplifting anymore. And because all of these other tragedies and tensions have occurred inside of the pandemic, each has received a thorough vetting in the recesses of my mind and the pages of my journal.

It has become increasingly clear to me this year that my family is the most important thing. It turns out that I chose the right wife, and my kids are the right ones for me. With all of this working and schooling from home and acting as each other’s playmates, teachers, and co-workers, I can only imagine how many families are at each other’s throats during all of these overlapping crises. For all of my pre-family-life worry and fear I had over whether I could exist—much less be happy—with the responsibilities of a husband and father, I am so glad that I ended up with these guys. I feel much better about that now, and I believe that foundation will support me no matter what else I have to face.

In watching the way my country’s institutions and people have handled (or mishandled) the crises of 2020, I have become even more deeply committed to moral and political positions I have held in the past. The coronavirus pandemic has made crystal clear what a failure of leadership looks like. In the halls of Congress and the White House, and in examples from different governors and mayors from around the country, I have seen examples of the best and worst kinds of politicians. It has affirmed for me that, even though I am not a fan of our two-party system and neither party acts exactly as I wish they would, the folks that at least lean my way are doing so much more basic Good for ordinary Americans—that is, almost all of us—than the ones leaning the other way. The particular political issues that have come into relief through the crises—climate science with the wildfires, health care coverage with the coronavirus and its ensuing unemployment, voting rights and women’s rights with the deaths of John Lewis and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, racial injustice with the murders of George Floyd and others, and the need to protect our democracy with the regular assaults on it by the President—have made me feel stronger in my positions than ever before. My conviction has multiplied. I have become even more of Me.

These things have also cast each of my relationships and potential relationships into the light, making me very protective of the kind of people I want to keep in my life now and let into it in the future. Though my heart will be wide open with love, I have no doubt also that the gate will be well-guarded. Boundaries are beautiful.

These overlapping crises and the time I have had to consider them has made these things very clear to me. I am certain that this clarity will make me a happier person going forward, better able to see my way and also better able to use my gifts to serve the world and all of the beautiful souls finding their way through it. Though I am eager for this year and its many calamities to be behind me, I can honestly say I am grateful for it. I will come out the other side of 2020 as a better person.

How about you? Have you managed to grow and improve your world amidst the stress and tragedy of this year? Open up your journal and write out your own version of a progress report. What changes have you gone through internally as the various crises of 2020 have piled on top of one another? What is your balance of “just trying to ride it out” versus “I can thrive in this” mentality? How different is that balance this year compared to a “normal” year? Which aspects of the year’s drama—coronavirus, job loss, racial injustice and protests, social isolation, change of routine, economic stress, climate emergencies, death of heroes, murder hornets, political drama—tend to send you into self-preservation mode, where simple survival is the goal and personal growth seems out of the question? In which areas have you made efforts to address the issue head-on and learn more about it to achieve better clarity in your position and/or take action in the world to help the cause? How has that effort changed you? If this year has had you “stuck” at home more often and unable to physically interact with others much, how have you dealt with that? What have you learned about yourself through that aspect of the experience? Did you reach any conclusions about yourself that caused you to make any major changes? Do you feel like you have clarified who you really are this year? What do you value most? What are your top priorities? Are there things that you have reduced or eliminated from your life in this process? What about people? How has seeing your “friends” react to this year on social media (e.g. their responses to George Floyd’s murder) changed the way you feel about them or their place in your life going forward? If you have let some habits or people go, do you feel lighter and more authentic for it? Have you started some new habits? Are they healthy or unhealthy? Can you point to anything specific in your world where you are making a more positive impact than you were before this crazy year happened? Is it enough just to know that you are bringing a better self out into your regular life each day? If you feel like you haven’t spun any of 2020’s calamities into growth experiences, how might you start today? No matter what you have done to this point, which crisis area feels ripe for your next growth spurt? I hope you will take on the challenge. Leave me a reply and let me know: How have you turned 2020’s many lemons into lemonade?

Rise,

William

P.S. If this letter resonated with you, please share it with your community. Let’s improve together!

P.P.S. If you appreciate this sort of personal introspection, I encourage you to purchase my book, Journal of YOU: Uncovering The Beauty That Is Your Truth, at your favorite online retailers.

COVID Paranoia: The Awfulness Of Thinking You Might Have It

“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.” –Epictetus

“Your mind is working at its best when you’re being paranoid. You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation at high speed with total clarity.” –Banksy, Banging Your Head Against A Brick Wall

Hello friend,

“So, have you guys been feeling okay since you left here?” That was the question my sister posed to me when I answered my phone last weekend. My kids and I had visited her family for a few days earlier in the week and had left two days before. “Uhhh…” I muttered as the alarm bells started blaring in my brain. “Nobody’s gotten sick? No fevers?” she continued. By then, my heart was racing and I was up and bounding toward my children, urgently questioning them about how they felt as I reached for their foreheads to feel temperatures. “Because your one-year-old niece has a fever…”

While my mouth was saying, “No, everyone seems fine, though I did cough a couple of times yesterday randomly,” my mind was screaming, “WHAT HAVE I DONE???” Instead of wondering if one of them passed the dreaded coronavirus to one of us, I immediately began to fret that I had given it to them. No one else could have been the source, I was sure. Only me. I was instantly filled with guilt and regret. How could I have been so reckless with the ones I loved? Surely I would never forgive myself.

I sound crazy, right? I know, I know. And it is crazy. It’s irrational, illogical, and way too dramatic. But it wasn’t sudden. I had already been building this story in my mind for a week before she called, and I have spent the days since in varying degrees of unfounded obsession on the topic.

Let me rewind the story.

Two weeks ago, I noticed the faintest little tickle in my windpipe. It was below my throat but above my lungs. And when I say faint, I mean that I had to do a mental “feel” through each part of my body just to notice it a few times a day. I would say that, even in non-COVID times, I am hypersensitive to physical stuff and constantly monitoring my body for injuries, ailments, and things that either agree with it (like stretching and water) or disagree with it (like running and deep-fried anything), probably leftover habits from my days in sports. And since the arrival of the coronavirus several months ago, that vigilance has only increased. That is especially the case with respiratory symptoms. I have scrutinized every single cough or sneeze for months. Thankfully, they have been very few in number and explained away by such things as swallowing down the wrong pipe or inhaling some pepper while cooking. But, needless to say, my radar and my guard are always up. So it was that I noticed—if only barely– this tiny tension in my trachea and committed myself to tracking it like a hound.

Nothing changed that day, and I didn’t feel anything else suspicious. I didn’t think about it when I got up the next day and went about my ordinary exercise and activities, but when I remembered it, my self-exam revealed that it was still there, still barely noticeable. Even though it felt like next to nothing, the fact that it was still there was disquieting. My kids and I were planning our visit to my sister’s family the next day, and I wanted to feel totally confident that we were all healthy. They have been super-diligent about social distancing for months, and I was not about to bring something into their anti-viral home. I continued to monitor my system all day and still felt good. That evening as we packed our bags, we all took our temperatures and were just right. I addressed my nagging concern about the faint strain in my windpipe by reminding myself to be logical. I didn’t want to be a hypochondriac, which it seemed I was becoming. I let it go and went to bed.

The next morning, I exercised, packed the car, and we hit the road feeling fine. About three hours into our four-hour journey, I coughed. Just once and very briefly, but still a cough. As with every one of the very few coughs I have done in the last several months, it set off alarm bells. First a trachea tickle, now a cough. Oi! Thankfully, it was one and done. Again, I calmed myself down and moved on, feeling good mentally and physically.

The next day was the same: the tiny tickle and a few random, single coughs. Given that I hadn’t had either symptom prior to the last few days, I was bothered. The COVID era—with its varied symptoms and many asymptomatic cases–had spooked me to anything in the ballpark. My symptoms were almost nothing—I would never have said I had a cold or mentioned any symptom if someone asked how I was doing–but that is still something. Barely something, but still.

So it went all week long. On our return from my sister’s house, I coughed three (single breath) times in the four hours. I noted the increase with concern. I noticed that my neck was a little stiff, too, and wasn’t sure if that could just be written off to my fitness routine, a poor sleeping position, or if an illness could do the same. The next day was similar, but I was a little bit tired. Was that the trip, with its disrupted sleep schedule and abundance of treats? Or was that another symptom? I still didn’t have a fever or any other noticeable symptom. While I didn’t necessarily feel sick, I noted in my journal that I seemed “not right.” And was that “not right” an actual, physical thing, or was it just the natural mental toll from a week of this self-analysis? Because I’m telling you, the constant dance between “I think I have something!” and “I have lost my fool mind!” was exhausting. It gave me a greater appreciation for the tax of mental illness.

And then it came, after a full week of hypervigilance: the call from my sister. My niece, whom we had just left two days prior, had a fever. Ugh! With the call came the guilt. The second-guesses. Had I been wrong to talk myself off the ledge about a negligible symptom? Should we have stayed home even though we all felt fine? How would I have even gotten the virus? If I gave it to her, who else? Was the “not right” I felt this morning enough that I should be in quarantine, even if it was basically nothing? I tortured myself with questions and doubt. It was awful. Thankfully, the worst of it only lasted a couple of hours, until my sister texted back that an Urgent Care visit revealed it to be “only” a double ear infection for my niece. Sweet mercy! What a relief! I was off the hook.

And yet….

I was still paranoid for myself and, by extension, my household. Was I tired because I took a long bike ride and then mowed the yard, or was it something more sinister? Was that a sneeze my daughter just did in the other room? How is everyone’s temperature? Sense of taste and smell?

Perhaps by a strange twist of Fate, my wife had come across a notice from our local health department offering free drive-up COVID tests earlier in the week and suggested we do it just for the knowledge. I thought it was a great idea, partially due to my paranoia and partially because it seems like something we should all be doing as often as possible. I am the first one to share my disappointment and disgust with America’s abject failure with the coronavirus. And while the complete lack of federal leadership certainly deserves much of the blame for that failure, the rest falls on us ordinary citizens. Of course, most of that is our rush to return to “normal life” and the self-centered, foolish behavior that stemmed from that, as I have lamented in a previous letter to you. But some of it, too, is the lack of a push to get tested (often) and then do our best version of personal contact tracing if positive. I realize it would be much easier if there was a robust system for testing and tracing organized and funded by the government—that has proven successful all over the world, but for some reason has not occurred to our leadership—but in the absence of that, we need to take more personal responsibility. So, I am all for random, frequent testing. So, we made our appointment for last weekend, drove up, got swabbed, and then went home to wait. And wait. And wait.

As we waited, though, life went on. I kept monitoring all of us for anything suspicious. By Tuesday, my hint of “not right” feeling had left my body. Even though I had a couple of small coughs per day, I felt free again somehow. The paranoia and dread feeling eased significantly. I was aware that a test result was still lingering out there in the future, which could throw a major wrench into my peace, but I was disengaging from the drama a bit. I was finally able to look at my reaction—the anxiety, the guilt, the uncertainty—from a clearer perspective and note how crazy I had gotten over symptoms that were next to nothing.

That realization really got me thinking about this virus’s hold on us, though, and imagining how much worse the paranoia would be for me if I actually had full-scale symptoms, not some trace of tightness in my trachea. Because seriously, what do people with allergies do? When they are stuffed up, sneezing, snotting, and feeling horrible—you know, as they do at regular intervals every year—do they assume the worst and start a strict quarantine? Is their life completely on hold until the pollen passes? Are they begging their doctor for COVID tests to prove to themselves and everyone else that they don’t have it? How about the rest of us when cold and flu season comes around? It will be a nightmare! My job said that we can’t go in to work if we are experiencing any symptom all year long. Anything? All of these daily checklists to get in the door anywhere—school, work, the doctor and dentist’s office, etc.—already have me on high alert. I will be a wreck when I actually have a legitimate symptom!

I realize most people probably aren’t as nerdy about the subtleties of their body’s fluctuations as I am, and I can tell from America’s coronavirus failure that most people aren’t as concerned as I am about spreading the virus to others or as diligent about social distancing as I (and definitely my sister) am. But I have to think that every one of us with a conscience has had and/or will have multiple bouts of the kind of COVID paranoia that I am just now coming out of. Some may get it for obvious reasons—the onset of major fever and tightness in the chest, or learning that they were in close contact with someone who tested positive for the virus—or the paranoia may be self-generated, the way mine mostly was. Because how can we not think that, in a nation that is already approaching six million diagnosed cases and around 175,000 deaths, that we will be in danger? Even if you accept the risk and go on your merry way without a mask or a conscience, you still have to wonder when you might have it.

In the end, I guess I am looking at these last couple of weeks as my trial run for the upcoming school year and cold/flu season, minus the real symptoms. It is sad that I have to cross my fingers in hopes that there will be enough tests available at that time and with a quick enough turnaround time on the results that our lives don’t feel perpetually quarantined and waiting for test results (our results came back negative, to my great relief, after five long days). That may be our reality as the cold months descend upon us and our sniffles become perpetual. I don’t like the thought of widespread anxiety, guilt, and dread in our society, but I suppose I ought to get used to it. If only there were something we could do about it….

Oh wait, there is! Now seems like a good time to get our act together. I am all for a healthy world and am willing to do my part to stem the tide of Death and the coming tsunami of COVID paranoia. I will mask up, wash my hands, keep my distance, and get tested. For my sake, for your sake, and for all of our sanity.

How about you? How worried have you yet been that you have contracted COVID-19? Open your journal and explore your levels of both concern and conscience. How often over the last several months have you wondered if you might have contracted the coronavirus? What has usually stirred your concern? Have you been in close contact with someone who had the virus? Did you know it at the time, or did you learn later that they had it when they were with you? Have you felt anxious after going into a grocery store or other indoor space where you were –either intentionally or accidentally—within six feet of other people? Have you been around people from outside of your household without masks on? Were they social occasions, or things like shopping? Does hanging around friends without masks on make you feel more comfortable than being with unmasked strangers? How about unmasked friends vs. masked strangers? How about your work situation? At your job, are you forced to interact in close proximity with people whose activities and contacts you cannot verify? Are your nearest co-workers in masks? What level of COVID stress or paranoia do you feel about this on a day-to-day basis? Has it made you think about quitting or taking a leave of absence? Have you questioned if your paycheck was worth the risk? Which of these areas of your life—work, social, or regular life stuff (e.g. grocery store)—tend to stir up the most COVID paranoia in you? What about your own personal triggers? During this era of the coronavirus, have you had days when you just haven’t felt well or have had specific COVID symptoms that made you believe you might really have the virus? Even if you hadn’t knowingly been in contact with someone, have your symptoms alone caused you any panic or distress? How strong were the symptoms? Were they barely noticeable, like mine, or were they clear and measurable (e.g. a fever)? Did you get tested for the virus? Did you go into quarantine? Were you worried enough that you warned the people in your life about possible exposure? If you genuinely believed you had the virus, how guilty did you feel about the people you may have infected before you realized it and went into quarantine? Did you have much regret about people you had socialized with or otherwise interacted with? If you have tested positive and were surprised by the result, could you look back at a symptom or recent day’s gut feeling and thought, “That must have been it!”? Have you been tested for the virus? Why not? If tests were free and easy to get any time you wanted one, how often would you take one? Wouldn’t it give you more peace of mind if you knew with certainty if you had the virus? How about if you knew that everyone around you was uninfected? How do you think your anxiety level will change as you go through cold and flu season and the inevitable symptoms you will feel that match COVID-19? Will you be willing to test? Will you be quick to quarantine when the symptoms come on? Will you be diligent about communicating with the people you have been in contact with? Are you anticipating that your regular life will get entirely shut down by the onset of symptoms—whether COVID or not—at least once in the coming months? Does that worry you, or will you just roll with it when it comes? Are your worries more along the lines of the disruptions it will cause to your family’s routine, or do you worry more about the actual sickness, death, and the long-term health consequences from the disease? Or do you worry more about spreading it? Do you think you fret about this virus more or less than the average person? On the whole, are you being a conscientious citizen and doing your part to minimize the spread of the virus so that fewer people will die and the country can get back to school and work, or are you mostly doing what you want and not being inconvenienced by the threat of being infected or infecting others in your community? If we were all a little more paranoid about being infected and infecting others, might our country be doing better in terms of cases and deaths? Could a little COVID paranoia actually be healthy? Leave me a reply and let me know: How anxious are you about getting and spreading the virus?

Be well and be considerate,

William

P.S. If today’s letter resonated with you, please share it with your communities. We will only truly thrive again if we do it together!

P.P.S. If this way of self-interrogation appeals to you, consider buying my book Journal of YOU: Uncovering The Beauty That Is Your Truth at your favorite online retailers.

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