We tend to appreciate what we have only when it is taken away from us. In what I am about to say, I am going paper over the fact that people are sick and dying and that millions have (temporarily) lost their jobs.
But a supermajority of people have been impacted by COVID-19 in a more superficial way – we are locked down with our loved ones at home.
This is now how I choose to look at the situation. Let me tell you a story. Ten years ago or so, my family – my wife and I, the kids, and my aunt – were driving through a park. I was driving my wife’s minivan and didn’t notice that we were low on gas and … we ran out of gas.
The car stopped dead in the middle of a large state park. My wife was initially upset that we were stuck in the middle of nowhere. The normal me would have been upset, too.
But the parent in me thought, “What would my father say and do?” I said to my family, “Think about it: If we drove through the park and nothing happened, it would have been just another time that we drove from point A to point B.
Now we have a little adventure that we’ll remember. Our lives are not threatened; we are all safe. Let’s just make the best of it.”
This story lacks drama and suffering (thank god). We simply called my father and asked him to bring us some gasoline. In the meantime, we played soccer and walked in the beautiful park. An hour later my father brought us the gas.
My kids and I filed this little misadventure as a happy memory of when we ran out of gas in the park and did fun things. My wife put it into the mental file of when I forgot to check if we had enough gas in our (her) car before we started driving.
For most (not all) of us, the situation today is not much different from this drive we had in the park. We have an opportunity to turn it into a happy future memory. Embrace it. We cannot change what we are going through today, but we can change how we look at it.
Our life is anything but normal, but other than the real pain others are going through, and despite my normal life being put on hold, I wouldn’t change a thing. I am embracing this experience.
If not for coronavirus, ten years from now it would have been just another March and April in 2020. For now, and despite the real hardship many are experiencing, we have the opportunity to create happy memories that we will look back on when we transition to life AC (after COVID)
