Where Do We Go From Here
When I initially thought about this post, I was planning to write a reflection on working from home and everything I loved about it as I prepared myself to work, yet again, from an office. When I stepped into my office to clean it down and throw out all the remnants of what my work looked like in 2020, however, I found myself having quite a different set of emotions. I found myself face to face with the concrete, physical reminders of everything that changed in that year and a half, from the framed photo of my dear kitty who we put down back in May to my save-the-dates for the wedding plan that we couldn’t have. It was a year and a half that took so much and gave just as much in return. It was a year that threw me into one of the most acutely stressful and traumatic situations of my life. It was a year that I married the love of my life. It was a year that I spent learning photography with my brother, even as it was a year that I saw no one else. In short, it was a lot. So as I stood in my office, an office still baring my maiden name on the door, I felt the weight of it all and found myself face to face with the question that I’m sure haunts many of us: in the light of everything we went through, and everything we still have yet to face, how do we go on?
I think about myself, the girl who I was before this invisible force broke through both our borders and our familiar bonds. Most of us, it seems, are just starting to come to grips with what the last year has taken. Even those of us who didn’t lose a loved one or our own lives or our health, all lost something. Maybe it was time or security or even something as precious as an easy relationship with the people we love most. As the gentle, sensitive soul that I am, the reality of such loss is something that is ever present for me. If I’m not careful, I can see it everywhere, in everyone I know, in my own life. And I feel it keenly, everywhere I see it - not just in my own personal life. Finding distance from such weight is a continual challenge.
In moments like these, I find that my mind drifts to the closing scene of one of the most iconic Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes of all time: One More Time With Feeling. It’s a musical episode, where Buffy’s kid sister accidentally releases a musical demon on the town, cursing everyone to sing and dance their way through life. It sounds enchanting, I know. And it is at first. But as time goes on, the cast reveals more and more deep, dark secrets, to devastating affect. At the end, as they defeat the demon and its power fades, the cast sings one more haunting number, and it’s those words that haunt me now:
Where do we go from here?
The battle’s done, and we kinda won, so we sound our victory cheer: where do we go from here?
[…]
Understand we’ll go hand in hand, but we’ll walk alone in fear. Tell me, where do we go from here?
The Delta variant, while impeded somewhat by the vaccine, still is wreaking havoc on communities across the country, filling up hospitals. Even for the vaccinated, it raises alarm bells and the resounding question of ‘what if?’ Whether by choice or ordinance, masks have reentered the chat. So, with just half the US population vaccinated and only somewhat protected, it feels just like the battle’s done and we only kinda won, and we ask ourselves, where do we go from here?
As I wiped down my dust coated desk and recycled my notes for alumni events that never happened, I found myself coming to a sort of peace about that question. The other week I had a conversation with some co-workers where I commented that inherent in every open ended question is great possibility. And that is something that I can either fear and avoid, or embrace in all its wild wonder. Today I find the year ahead even less concrete in some ways, than my view of the world as I stood at the threshold of January 1, 2021. At that point I knew the coming months would be cold, perhaps lonely, but I also knew they would be filled with so much love. No matter the lockdown measures or the infection rates, I would still awake next to the man that I loved each and every morning. I could trust in the love of my family - those we could see, and those that we wouldn’t see for some time. Despite the chill of those winter months, not even the darkness and the isolation of the pandemic ridden winter could banish my laughter and joy. Now I stand yet on another threshold. I stand on the threshold of the (God willing) final months of this wretched disease and its aftermath. In some ways, it’s the biggest open ended question I’ve faced in my life. And, in that question, is great possibility.
Over the long, lonely months months of the pandemic, I had time to reflect, time to grow, and like so many, time to read. One of the books I read in that time was Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat In Difficult Times by Katherine May. This personal reflection shared insights on lessons learned through the darkness of winter and the hardness of life. While I do not subscribe to the ‘everything happens for a reason’ school of thought, I do deeply believe that everything can be redeemed. Given the chance, goodness triumphs. Wintering reminded me of the winter that I passed, and how even through the darkest times, I found myself face to face with a new kind of grace. Grace for myself to feel everything with the depth and intensity that I feel, and grace with myself to accept things are neither my fault nor my responsibility to fix. I found a new grace for the people that I love, as I recognized how everyone I knew found themselves faced with the same great challenge, and yet had to find their road through it. In that grace I saw a balance and an acceptance. As Katherine May put it “Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.” With the winter at my back, and a new unknown ahead, I start to find an answer to that question ‘where do we go from here?’
Standing in my office, clutching the remnants of what was, I realized that I don’t need a clear answer to that question. This life we live appears to be a fragile one, but don’t be fooled. Like the crocuses that burst through the cold earth of my parents lawn this spring, life looks delicate and yet it is deceptively strong, able to withstand the surprise spring storms. It keeps on going, keeps on changing, keeps on blooming even brighter than before. Life is a great possibility. There’s no ignoring the fact that who I am today is not who I was back in March of 2020; at the same time that at my core, my truest self, remains. Yet, that would remain true even if there was no pandemic. The intensity of the pandemic merely revealed this truth more clearly. The crucible of this year has shown me the depths of own strength and gentleness, and it is with that spirit that I look ahead into the possibility of all that comes next. Life is always a balance of winters of retreat and summers bursting with life and renewal. No matter the course my life takes, the tides or the seasons, it is always filled with joy and love and so much possibility. And that is where I go from here.
That said, for the love of all good things, please get vaccinated. Life may always have its winters, but I’d be happy if the winter behind me is the only pandemic winter I see.
