I have talked about finish lines a lot in the 18 months of this blog. Most recently, Billy Mills crossing the line as an Olympic champion and Weini Kelati in the race to become a U.S. Citizen.
There was also a piece in February 2021 about the pandemic as a race, one where the finish line wasn’t quite clear.
Skip to the present.
We felt we had just about finished the race.
We could almost reach out and touch the finish line tape.
We could smell and taste the sweetness of being done.
Masks started to gather dust, lonely and forgotten.
In May and June, I remember referring to the pandemic in the past
tense a few times. I always caught myself, but at the same time it did seem
that it was more and more acceptable to do so. All signs pointed toward a
receding virus as life opened back to normalcy.
Like a well-written play, delta emerges from stage left, disrupting the stillness as the crowd (us!) gasps in horror.
Let’s sit with this for a moment.
It is hard to be so close to the finish and then have the
race extended. I don’t hear people acknowledging this. Instead, I hear anger,
fear, exhaustion, and people struggling. Myself included.
By recognizing how hard it is to feel that the finish is so close and then have the race extended indefinitely we can begin to
accept it. We can then move to processing it. And once processed, we can begin
to heal and move forward.
Putting on my doctor hat:
The patient: all of us.
The diagnosis: "3rd Wave Distress Syndrome"
The prescription:
Recognize, process, and accept the challenge this 3rd COVID wave presents
Get away from looking for the finish line in these months ahead.
Each day, do our part to keep COVID from winning.
Breathe deep and give thanks for the day’s gifts.
Keep moving.
The journey began when we took our first breath. We learned to talk and walk, run, play, work and thrive.
ReplyDeleteLife is a gerund "inging" from the first to the last breath. The finish line is illusive and inevitable whether we seek it or not. And when we finally reach it we realize it's really just the beginnING.