Right now, happiness is hard

I don’t think I have anything profound to say tonight. Our world is never easy, life is never easy, but right now things are harder than normal. The pandemic has changed all of our lives in so many ways. Change is always hard and most of us are experiencing huge levels of change right now. We’re seeing changes in the way we work, for many of us that means working from home. That brings it’s own set of challenges. For many, whose children are also at home, it means multi-tasking at levels you’ve never seen before. Even if you just live with one other person, you’re in each others faces far more than ever before. There are challenges with technology, shared bandwidth, shared attention. All of our relationships, whether partners, roommates or children are being stressed.

There’s also stress on relationships in the opposite direction, we’re not to be able to be face to face like we used to be able to be. So for some of our relationships this is a new stress, no chance to be close or to hug. For many of us with elderly parents, we’re unable to see them. And we may not be able to see them for some time, if your parents are elderly or not in great health, you begin to wonder if you’ll ever see them again. Even worse, for people whose parents have dementia and are in managed care, video conferencing and phone calls just don’t cut it.

Our resiliency is certainly being tested. One of the things that is missing right now, is the ability for us to do the things we need to do to recharge our batteries. For a lot of folks there just isn’t time to be alone, or to get a break. For me, what gets me back to even is the ability to travel and get new experiences. So at this time, that emotional reserve that most of us normally have is missing. That means when we face obstacles or challenges were not as able to handle them with our normal grace. We’re shorter, we explode more, we’re basically just more reactive than usual. Even writing this post tonight I had to face this. It seems that October 1st is the tech industry’s preferred change date. This week I’ve found very different looks on some websites I visit regularly. And tonight, WordPress has finally forced me into using their new editor. I don’t like it, it doesn’t allow me to do some formatting things that have become standard on my page. Navigating it tonight, I lost content, got incredibly frustrated and at one point burst out with a string of profanities. It was a brief thing but emblematic of reality right now.

Right now a lot of us are feeling less effective. We’re feeling like we’re bad parents, bad children, bad friends and it adds to how we feel right now. For me, I seem to be out of motivation. I’m doing what I have to do, but I’m finding it far to easy at the end of the workday to eat, and drop in a chair to be entertained by my computer or television. I’ve been quite upset with myself over this, I even skipped my weekly post for this blog last week, I’m sure some of you feel the same way about yourselves right now.

So my message tonight is a simple one, give yourself a break. We all need to give everyone some extra space and grace right now. We also need to extend that to ourselves. These are, as much as I’m getting to really dislike the term, unprecedented times. So it’s ok, if right now, you’re not your best self. Take a breath, relax, things will become more normal, they will get better eventually. I’m sure you’re all doing far better than you realize. It’s ok, what’s happening isn’t your fault and you’re doing the best you can, that’s enough. Be well my friends and have a happy day. ~ Rev Kane