Quarantine: the place where you meet yourself

So, have you met anyone interesting lately? Wait, did you just laugh? No, you say? You’re in quarantine. Right. Well, hold on just a minute, I bet you have. I think you’ve had the unique opportunity to deeply connect with the most interesting person around. The most important one you could ever meet in your lifetime.

Now, social distancing certainly has provided some rather interesting opportunities for connection. Not the usual kind, of course, but opportunities nonetheless. Zoom birthdays, bookclubs, college and preschool classes, even weddings are happening in homes across the world. Social distance meet ups, masked walks, and even parties where you park your cars closely or bring your own chair. Interesting, indeed. One things is certain, the person you’ve connected with the most is yourself. I think this is perhaps the greatest gift this strange quarantine has given each of us: the unique opportunity to meet yourself, yet again, and deeply.

You, meet YOU.

Hello, old friend. It’s so very nice to see you. Yes, come in, come in. Stay a while. No actually, stay a long while. You won’t be going anywhere for quite some time. Those trips to your favorite store to wander the aisles casually, your favorite equipment at the gym, a night out with friends? Yeah, you can kiss those goodbye. Those won’t be happening for a while.

You can just sit down and get reeeeeal comfortable.

Or uncomfortable, as it might be.

When life is changed, under pressure, and even stripped down from so much of the usual cloak and dagger of it all, we get the chance see more clearly who we really are at our core, how we’ve learned to function in the world, and whether or not it’s working for us.

Turns out, you didn’t need that mountaintop experience or to travel the world in self discovery, after all. You have the same opportunity right here. To be an observer of yourself.
It’s not so much about what’s going on in the world. If you’re paying attention, it’s about what’s going on inside of you. And if you allow it, you have the opportunity to grow in the space of the uncomfortable.

Like an internal questionnaire, quarantine asked us at “intake”:

Your habits have be exposed in quarantine, maybe amplified, or possibly disrupted. The good ones have become even more helpful, and have been lifelines. For many, including me, that’s exercise and fresh air. The less desirable ones have also been brought into the dazzling light of quarantine, too, laid bare for you to notice. Impatience, lack of process, self-sabotaging tendencies have probably brought frustration.

There’s probably a lot of things that you already knew about yourself that this has further solidified. Your status as an introvert or extrovert is probably startling clear. Maybe you miss social events, hugging people, or strolling the aisles of your favorite store. You might have discovered whether you truly enjoy putting on makeup or did it because you felt that you had to. You’re team get dressed, get ready to feel your best or cozy sweatpants all day is totally your thing. Do you really love structure as much as you thought did, or are you appreciating the reprieve?

What about the tasks you didn’t do before because you “didn’t have time”? You realize you were actually just avoiding them for another reason, because now you have “all the time” and you still don’t do them. The things you turn to for comfort , even somewhat unknowingly before, you see more clearly now.

Have you ever played the wine or coffee game? My husband and I have asked this question over the years, a funny game of truth or dare, either/or with two favorite beverages. It feels more accurately like Sophie’s choice: which would you pick, wine or coffee? Though the choice is a difficult one, coffee usually wins. Life is full of opportunities to be taken, workouts and works, and coffee is a much more effective helper. (Plus add in kids, it is wins by a landslide for more effective parenting. Ha!)

Quarantine has given me the chance to test this theory out. Turns out, I was right all along. I have not had a glass of wine since the last was poured two days into quarantine. I’m not a willing participant for any extra trips to the store, so I’ve done without my nightly glass of chilled white wine. To be fair, I have substituted and gotten a little creative with the liquor cabinet’s forgotten contents. So this story is not about complete abstinence, but it is about self discovery.

I have discovered that I don’t really need that glass of wine. I mean, I’ll take it when I can in the future, but until then, I’ll be just fine without it. I would probably discover this about coffee, too, if I allowed myself the chance. Though I don’t volunteer as easily for that one, we have come dangerously close to testing it out. I just don’t want to go down that road at this time, and I’m okay with that.

See, self discovery. If you can’t do some of the things that you normally do, you’ll begin to understand what you truly need in your life and what you in fact, don’t.

It should be said, you have gotten to meet who you are today in your life. Not who you were or even who thought you were. Who you actually are. We are ever-changing human beings and don’t always realize how we’ve changed or grown until you we stop and notice.

It’s like when you have a kitten. When it’s yours, and you live with it day in and day out, don’t don’t always realize how much it’s growing. Until, that is, a friend comes over and says “wow, your cats gotten so big!” You turn to look at your kitten and see, for the first time, that it is, indeed, now a much different cat. It’s like that with ourselves. Space allows us a chance to see change.

We are ever-changing human beings and you don’t always realize how we’ve changed or are growing until you we stop and notice, and even allow. Quarantine has provided this exact opportunity.

I hope you have found some things you are proud of and love about yourself, and you probably found some things you don’t, and that frustrate you. Whatever you find as see yourself more clearly, I hope that you’re taking notes. Like, literally, taking notes. Don’t forget what you’re learning.

It’s in this learning, noticing, and the exploration of what we do and who we are, even when it might be a little uncomfortable, where we can grow. In all the life’s discomfort, there lies the opportunity for growth if we allow it.

KNOW, And GROW.

Think of teeth breaking through a baby’s gums, teenage legs aching with quick growth, a mother’s belly swollen with new life. Think of a student’s brain stretching and growing as they struggle through learning something new, a marathoner training thier legs to go further and farther. Despite any pain, or maybe because of it, in these moments, growth is happening. They are becoming stronger, better at something.

So are you. This pause has opened up a space in time, creating an awareness for all of us, that we cannot allow to pass. There’s such incredible opportunity. We are often more capable than we give ourselves credit for, and more is happening than we realize.

You’ve probably even changed as you’ve proceeded through it. Maybe you’ve learned some new things- a skill from YouTube, tried your hand at a new hobby, taken an online course, or read an interesting book. Those are wonderful things. I hope you can continue them.

You’ve had a chance to reacquaint more clearly, deeply, and without any of the usual pretext as you are today. I hope you can appreciate what you’ve noticed and I hope you maintain a front row seat to your own continued growth. You can’t fix all of the things at once. Life is a complicated journey of discovery. But Keep noticing and growing, because with each discovery, more beauty is revealed.

To be honest, I was wondering on what thought to even end here. After all, growth is the kind of conversation that is both ongoing, and to me, fascinating. I set aside my writing, watched a movie with my family.

Turns out, that movie would be just the things. It was Dr. Dolittle, starring Robert Downey Jr., (which, I realized later, was just released in January.) And how appropriate this movie was. Not only is it a little bit of art imitating life, it brought it all together for me, and I hope it might do the same for you. (Don’t worry, it wasn’t the talking to animals part. But you can find messages of hope in the most unlikely of places!) I’ll give you the quick synopsis, beginning and end, and you’ll see what I mean.

In opening scene, two young kids find him alone in his house, listless, living in solitude and mourning the loss of someone he loved. His hair is a mess, his beard is outrageously long, he has lost all hope of living the life he loved. He is all of us, on some days at least, in quarantine. Outwardly, or inwardly. Eventually he is pulled from him home, reluctantly, but with choice, in order to help save both the queen and his livelihood. This adventure take some him across the world, and though this may be where our journeys differ, the truths of self discovery and possibility are available to all of us as well, no matter where we are. How does it end, you ask? Here is a rather interesting and timely quote that sums it all up.

“Our story ends the way it began. Mostly. There once was a peculiar doctor who found he was at his best when sharing his extraordinary ability with others.  Soon, he reopened his gates.  Doolittle discovered his place in the world, once again.   After all, it’s only by helping others that we can truly help ourselves.”

Spoken by Emma Thompson, voice of the narrator, Doctor Dolittle 2020

Why does it matter, anyway, all of this self awareness. Not only is being comfortable and confident in your own skin a really wonderful thing. But something else magical comes from that place of understanding. You can better understand and appreciate your place in this beautiful world. The beauty that you bring to it.

When quarantine is over and the doors to your home are reopened, I hope that for you the gates in your heart are reopened as well. That you find that with this chance to meet yourself, that you have discovered, again, and more fully, your own beautiful place in this world.

Xo