August 9, 2023

The year 2020 smacked me and the rest of the world upside the head and then locked our lives up neatly for the next two years. Careers and education and dreams simmered in the background. We waited and were forced to carry on. I lost my footing, tumbling head first into the universal ennui surrounding me. I temporarily forgot how to see and embrace the continuously unfolding divine. I forgot how to box-breathe. The nurse scientist was too busy raging against skeptics, armchair epidemiologists, and distrust of science to pay attention to my breathing. I was locked in a spiral of fear, uncertainty, and the collective trauma.

Every evening, when the cannabis kicked in, I would stop my ritual doomscroll and marvel over the world put on pause. The blue skies over uncongested cities made me marvel in the gift this sheltering in place offered. As the year unfolded, I was awed by people’s stories about learning new skills, quitting jobs to pursue their passions. It wasn’t until 2021 I realized this pandemic was just another way my heart was broken open once again. This despicable and relentless virus proved again to me I needed to stop trying to move against my own unfolding and just be. It was ok to just be. It was ok to be banal. It was ok to be boring. What’s wrong a soul’s purpose being the exquisite act of “do no harm and love what the Universe gives you”? But isn’t this concept the root impetus of the big broad strokes of revolutionizing computers, conserving water, or reducing a carbon footprint?