“He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.” - Nietzsche
This rare unfamiliar time is revealing our need and longing for connection, meaning and purpose. Our virtual meetings (all day long) invite us into our colleagues’ homes with dogs laying on the futon, kids crossing in the background, waving in the camera and snuggling with Mom who looks a bit worn. Finally, something that makes meetings fun and enjoyable! Suddenly, we are letting our guard down, becoming real (especially our hair) and welcoming authenticity into our life without apology or pretense. We are immersed in a master class on empathy, kindness and gratitude.
The 24/7 news and self-appointed experts on a never seen in our lifetime pandemic are predicting what the “new normal” will be. While I want the economy to get moving again, to go out to a restaurant with friends, to have long hugs and for people to have meaningful work, I am not interested in going back to “normal.”
If we return to “normal” of familiar busyness that we complained about, we have missed the PhD level lessons of this time that is filled with space, wandering and long-overdue quiet, solace. If we go back to our old self, assumptions, expectations, we will be more lost than we already feel and waste the gifts of this time.
Purpose, creativity, and possibility are more challenging and fulfilling than certainty, familiarity and mere activity. I am so much more interested in a “new awesome” that sticks and stays, transforms and transcends. An awareness and awakening. One in which we use our time mindfully, trying new things, carving space for daily quiet, offering kindness generously, pursuing habits and hobbies without concern for perfection and accuracy and dive deep into imperfection, messy, delight, joy and mystery.
“So often we make a commitment to change our ways, but stall in the face of old reflexes as new situations arise. When gripped by fear or anxiety, the reflex is to hold on, speed up, or remove oneself. Yet when we feel the reflex to hold on, that is usually the moment we need to let go. When we feel the urgency to speed up, that is typically the instant we need to slow down. Often we feel the impulse to flee, it is the opportunity to face ourselves. Taking a deep meditative breath, precisely at this moment, can often break the moment of anxiety and put our psyche in neutral. From here, we just might be able to step in another direction,” writes Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening. He continues, “Yet, if we can outlast the urge to judge everything we encounter, a miracle starts to surround us in which painting, music, poetry, running water, flowers, wind through trees, open vistas – all touch and draw out their counterpart that lives quietly within us.”
The canvas is blank and waiting for you to pick up a brush and create a colorful, brilliant and exhilarating masterpiece of your future, your evolution, the real you. When searching for insights, ideas and inspiration, go within first, take inventory of what already is and then look at history, to the classics, masters and philosophers who all have moved through pandemics, wars, natural disasters and transformative times like the Renaissance. Those who overcame, innovated and created masterpieces in spite and because of their circumstances.
“Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.” – Marcus Aurelius
What does nature reveal? What do the seasons teach? How does the caterpillar transform into a butterfly? How do seeds become harvest?
A few days ago, I took Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning off my bookshelf and started looking at the pages I marked 20 years ago. Dr. Frankl survived the horror of Nazi concentration camps and the persecution and murder of his own family. And through all this unimaginable inhumanity and unfathomable brutality, he transcended his circumstances and found hope, optimism and meaning in the experience. His insight is worthy of study, practice and application.
“What was really needed was a fundamental change in our own attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way.” Frankl stated. “One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is a unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.”
He sums it up simply and brilliantly, “Self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”
We must transcend, move from surviving to thriving, to discover our “why” so we can bear “how” and most importantly overcome not only our circumstances but the self-imposed limitations that we’ve allowed into our mind, heart and spirit. What is life expecting from you right now in this moment? How will you answer? Concrete over abstract, the answer is within and waiting to be heard. Listen with hope and anticipation.
No more normal, not even a “new normal.” Prepare for a “new awesome!”
“How are you tending to the emerging story of your life?” – Carol Hegedus