Are you struggling now? Here are some thoughts to help

I bet it’s been a while since you read an article online about coronavirus, hasn’t it? Oh, it’s only been twenty minutes? Never mind then. Read this anyway because it’s important.

How are you doing?

No, really. How are you doing? Take a moment to reflect on how you are doing right now. How do you feel? What thoughts are running through your head?

What about your family and friends? How are they doing? Do you know? Have you asked? How long ago was that?

In times like these, it is important to check in on the people we care about, including yourself, to make sure they are okay. A lot of people aren’t. Sure, we see silly videos of people taking off their t-shirt — or their sweatpants — while doing a handstand. We debate whether Carole Baskin killed her husband. We see everybody and their mother — sometimes literally — joining TikTok and making silly videos.

But what is going on beneath the surface? What lies beyond the Instagram and Snapchat-filtered life everyone presents to the world?

Everywhere you look, people are struggling. They are struggling to make sense of things. They are struggling to figure out how to spend their time. They are struggling to cope with the fact that they are no longer allowed to do what they love to do.

I want to offer a few thoughts, hoping they help you struggle a little bit less in the weeks and months ahead.

Embrace the stillness

Never in our lives have we experienced — or will we experience — such a profound moment of stillness. Make the most of it. Notice it. Learn to love it.

Our everyday lives are often filled with so much noise and busyness we have no time to sit and think. Now you do. You are not going anywhere, neither is anyone else. Why not embrace it?

Right now, you have space, you have silence, you have stillness. Those are the things you have. Use them to your advantage. Take a moment to be still. Usually, we go through life on a mission to do something, anything, to avoid doing nothing. (For those wondering, I still classify binge-watching Tiger King on Netflix as doing something.) What if, for only an hour of your life, you turned off your TV, put your phone away, paused your music, and simply existed, silent and still? How would you feel when you were done? What would you have thought? What would you have learned?

Rediscover yourself

All around us people are rediscovering things they loved to do years ago but stopped doing because they became an adult and got serious. They are rediscovering themselves, too. They are relearning what makes them tick, what makes them curious, what makes them feel alive.

I, for one, have rediscovered my love of writing, cooking, playing board games with family and friends, and sitting in silence for long stretches of time letting my mind wander wherever it wants to go. I joined MasterClass and enrolled in a writing course taught by Neil Gaiman and a cooking course taught by Gordon Ramsay. I picked up books I haven’t touched in a long time and skimmed their pages, looking for bits of wisdom to help me work through some of the challenges I am facing. I collaborated on a small video project with my younger brother, something we have never done together. I have called my parents more and gotten their advice and perspective on things; I have done the same with my friends. As a result, I have learned a lot about myself and the world around me that I would not have learned if I had thrown in the towel and considered this time in my life lost.

My point is, making the most of things helps you make sense of things.

Every human struggles

Every human on earth is struggling with something right now, including you and me. Many of us are struggling with the same things, the same types of things anyway. It is okay to struggle. We all struggle, even — sometimes especially — the people who appear to have it all figured out. (They don’t, I promise.) Life is hard, and it sucks sometimes. But if you focus on the next few steps in front of you and keep moving forward, taking it one day at a time, you will move from this moment to the next and be all the better for it.

Good or bad? You decide

When you reflect on this experience in the rearview mirror of your life, do you want it to be good or bad? Do you want it to be positive or negative? Is this alive time or dead time? In the end, you decide how valuable — or not — this time in your life will be. So what will it be?

I hope you found this article helpful. Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts if you want to share them.