I feared, I panicked, I screamed,
I prayed
I took a deep breath
I sat still, I let the tears flow
I realized what truly matters
I realized who truly matters!
The above lines describe some of my feelings and emotions throughout 2020. In the beginning of the year, these emotions were more frequent; they are a rarity now. In March 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, conversations centered around when would things return to “normal”. Everything we were experiencing was so counter-cultural to what we were used to. This was my prayer for what I had hoped and prayed would be the new normal.
2020 showed us how similar we are, how connected we are, in spite of all the man-made differences of caste, color, creed, race economic status…
Soon after the lockdown in March, I was scheduled to precept on the inpatient medicine team.
As I walked down the hall, suddenly the familiar seemed less familiar. To limit the spread we were assigned to specific geographic locations in the hospital. Physically we were all dressed in the traditional scrubs, masks and goggles. I found myself apologizing for not recognizing some of my colleagues. “You have to smieyes, smile with your eyes” I shared with the team.
We all had the same difficulties irrespective of our experiences or our skills. None of us had dealt with this situation before. As I had my routine check-in with the team, it was immediately apparent how similar our fears were. The existing hierarchy that exists in medicine, especially in academic medicine, crumbled. We were all simply human, irrespective of where we came from. Our backgrounds, experiences, socioeconomic status or how many letters we had after our name did not matter. We were all the same, with the same fears, the same anxieties. We were grateful for similar things, such as our relationships, families, the opportunity to give back.
In our safe space of check-in, we found an opportunity to unpack our emotions. I shared my fears of my own possible infection, fear as a mother for her children being on the front lines far away from Chattanooga, or feeling anxiety and a sense of guilt at the possibility of infecting my elderly parents who I am blessed to have with me at home. I shared my disappointment at cancelling many travel plans to celebrate family traditions, visit children, present and attend professional meetings, all which enrich and rejuvenate me. I shared how difficult it was to have frank discussions about end of life with my children and parents before I came to work.
Experiencing the catharsis of the sharing, I found myself reflecting and turning to my coping rituals—and inviting the team to do the same. We started with intentional offerings of gratitude for the silver linings in spite of COVID.
When we are faced with our powerlessness, when we are faced with our own fragility, when we are faced with our own impermanence, when we are faced with no other option but to survive, to find a way to get up and move on, we have a choice in how we respond!
I found myself reflecting on these questions.
What was I learning about myself?
What was I learning about what I needed?
What was I learning about the people in the community around with me?
Later, I took time to unpack my answers and add them to my ritual.
Making intentional reflection a ritual, having the hard conversations with myself, and in the safe community created by close relationships of family and friends, was crucial, cathartic, creative and rejuvenating. This ritual of self-reflection and reflection within relationships was the catalyst that helped the silver-linings shine brighter, allowed me to redirect and refocus, reclaim my courage and rise!
#REFLECT: What were your emotions in 2020? What did you learn about yourself? What were your learnings? How will these learnings help you flow into 2021?
Photo by Adolfo Félix on Unsplash
As we enter 2021, how will you tend to self-care, community and resilience? I will continue posting reflections on these themes and invite you to join in the conversation here or on Twitter or Instagram with your thoughts or what you are doing for self-care and care of others. My book explores such ideas too: Resilient Threads: Weaving Joy and Meaning into Well-Being.
The reflection
Come to think of it, until now, I never thought of these questions raised by Mukta.
For the past one year, life had continued to flow, although not as ‘usual’.
Now that I look back as I respond to these questions, only one word comes to my mind that explains all the questions and covers all the emotions during the pandemic year of 2020.
The word is ‘Hope’. We lived with hope and learned not to give up hope, ever!
We consider ourselves fortunate as retired octogenarians, we stayed far away from the center of the action. We appreciate the emotions of Mukta, and many others like her, who followed their profession with confidence, courage, and conviction in the face of suffering, misery and death surrounding them. All we could do to relieve her anxiety when she came home after long hours was to commend and support her confidence, conviction, and service based on hope. We all know that these epidemics and pandemics have come and gone in the past, we believe that this too shall pass. We did what we could do, to protect ourselves and everyone else in whose contact we might have come, by taking prescribed protective measures. We left the rest to the destiny.
Frankly speaking, we did not miss anything. Communication with family and friends continued even though travel and personal contacts were curtailed. All essentials were available. What became abundantly clear was that all the decorative luxuries of social gatherings, entertainments, sports and parties were not really part of the essentials. We could easily do without them.
It also became clear that the concepts of confined spaces were being replaced by expandable virtual spaces, specially in the fields of education, communications, and many professional organizations. What, however, was strikingly apparent was the lack of ‘the human touch’ especially in the vital profession of healthcare. The personal face to face expression of compassion to console in hours of need, something that is difficult to achieve by other means.
Frankly, we did not notice any change in the behavior of family, friends, or neighbors. Certainly, there was an atmosphere of fear and concern for life that became the talk of the occasion, but no one was afraid of any imminent catastrophe. It was amazing to see the human resilience and how we take things in our stride.
At our age and stage, our prayers were directed more towards those affected by the calamity rather than for the fear of our own lives. Having survived for more than eight decades; our survival was not the issue with us, but survival of others certainly was, specially of our near and dear ones; and we prayed with extra vigor for their welfare.
As for the lessons, we learned about the fragility of life, impermanence of things, superfluous relationships, and attachments with unnecessary things became even more irrelevant.
It became obvious that all that one needs are the basic physical necessities, mental peace and serenity, and happiness and contentment for the soul. Everything else is greed that one can easily dispense with.
Hope is the strongest positive emotion; fear is the strongest negative one. Hope can sustain life under any circumstances, as it did during the past year of pandemic turmoil.