One year.
One shocking, saddening, sobering, stressful year.
It was last March when most of us (in the US) began sheltering-in-place. Thus began a flipbook of individual journeys that made up one collective sojourn.
So what do you do when the pandemic isn’t over, but one year is?
You know when sometimes you laugh so hard, like, for real, ROFL LMAO laughing? You know when you laugh so hard that you start crying? Or when you cry for so long that the most trivial and inane thing makes you laugh till your cheeks hurt and you’re close to tears again?
You know when you sing at the top of your lungs and soon you are just shouting? Or when you shout so much at a big game or concert with so many voices that the echoes hang in the air like music, and suddenly, you’re singing again?
You know when one thing blends into another and two seemingly opposite actions meld into one? Isn’t that what this year has been?
For this reason, we must take a moment this week. If not to celebrate, then simply to feel all that we have felt in a year forever branded with whatever version of hell, heaven or purgatory fate dealt us.
Although the pandemic is far from over, hope coyly beckons us to keep feeling our way through the darkness with the promise of a glimmer of golden light just around the corner.
For this reason, and more, we must take a moment to laugh, cry, sing and shout. Because if there’s anything one year of the pandemic has taught us, it is that not only can all this exist together, but that all of this co-exists, connects and carries us through.
