What Can You Learn From it All?
As I sit in my unfinished basement in my makeshift office for what is now the fourth week in a row, I am beginning to ask myself more and more what is it that I am supposed to have learned from all of this?
You should be asking yourself that questions too because each of us three obligations in exchange for the time we are granted.
You have the responsibility to live
You have the responsibility to learn
You have the responsibility to lead
We have each been granted the gift of life. For most of us, that comes with it the freedom to choose how we will spend our time on earth. Will it be solely for the pursuit of pleasure or will it be invested in the pursuit of purpose and joy?
And how will we evolve over time? Will we simply live day-to-day, or will we pause along the way to reflect and learn from our experiences?
And what will you do with those lessons? Will you simply course correct or will you share them with someone, directly or indirectly, who could benefit from your experiences?
The lessons that I, personally, am uncovering from this coronavirus experience are still unfolding for me. That said, I am the process of pausing and reflecting. To illustrate where I am today, I am sharing below the conversation I had with my 14-year-old early this morning.
It has become my habit to send my children a text every morning. In that text, I try to provide something that lifts them up, and to let them know every day that they are loved.
This morning, I sent the quote that I have inserted as an image at the start of this post with the following comment:
”Good morning, kiddo. It occurred to me this morning that this whole entire corona virus thing may just be God’s way of forcing us to do exactly what this quote suggests. To just give ourselves some grace, force us to be in less of a hurry, and to simply accept what we cannot control. If that’s so, maybe this isn’t such a bad thing after all.”
My youngest, with all the positivity a 14-year-old can muster, responded with this:
“Except for, you know, the hundred of thousand people dying and crashing the economy and putting millions of people out of jobs, etc…”
My response back was this:
”There’s always a lesson. Usually, the greatest lesson is on the other side of some darkness. Those things may be happening, but why? Is it because we’ve become too dependent on technology and not connected enough to the real people in our lives? Is it because we spend too much time in a hurry? We’re too materialistic? We don’t spend the time necessary to exercise or feed our body food that are natural and wholesome?
If the less healthy are more likely to be at risk, that should push us to strive for greater health so we can survive things like pandemics. If we are out of work it should teach us to spend less and save more so we can endure a period of financial discomfort. If we’re going to be stuck in a house with a handful of people, it should remind us to always nurture loving kindness and demand an environment of love and respect.
Maybe those are my lessons and yours are different. That’s okay. The only lesson that would be wrong would be to experience a once-in-a-lifetime event like this and learn nothing at all.”
The simple truth is I have no idea whether these will ultimately be the lessons I learned from this experience. Maybe there will be a collective lesson that we as a society extract that is more powerful and more truthful than what I have found on my own.
But what I do know is that we have an obligation to live, to learn, and to lead.
Are you learning something different than me? If so, please drop me a note and become the leader you were meant to be.