When I’m caught up in the muddle of stress and worry and work, I’m not the same person as I am when I’m not.

In my weakest, most tired moments, I look around at the somewhat ridiculous things I am spending my time on and wonder if maybe I should be aiming higher?

It’s hard enough to get my to do list done each day. I don’t have time for the big stuff.

Maybe that’s the first step to reentering the world. Admitting that I just don’t have what it takes to be a good community member right now.

Of course it will all work out. But it might not.

There’s such a safety in pessimism. It’s absolutely true, and somehow completely wrong.

Our suffering can make us kind, it can make us strong, it can make us funny, and it can make us humble. It can also break us.

Somewhere along the line, we were taught that being a good friend, a good community member, means always putting others’ needs first, and therefore, that needing something that imposed on someone else was being a bad person.

I’d venture a guess that those superpowers that I see in others come from having to walk similarly difficult paths. Paths that, on first glance, look easy because of those superpowers.

It’s been so long that we’ve felt burdened that many of us have forgotten what it feels like to be free.

I’ve been in this lockdown long enough to realize that in the face of an incomprehensible monstrosity like a pandemic, sometimes the stress comes out sideways.

I am still often outraged by the failures, the selfishness, the sheer incompetence of people who should have spent this year doing a better job than they did. I’ve learned how to wait for that to pass, and it always does.

At what point did I start treating myself like an unreliable employee who needs to be watched at all times?

It’s not bad to react to unusual situations in unusual ways. It’s worse to pretend that the wind isn’t blowing, to act like because the sun is out we should be frolicking on the sand.

Whether that’s in marriage, friendship, parenting, or in our broader community. None of us can get everything we want from others.

It’s hard for me to stop my own life for long enough to look around and see other people struggling. I’m too busy running around, having fun (or, more likely, checking things off my to-do list, which is my version of fun.)

In this season, this long winter, where we are having to choose joy and compassion and so, so much patience, I can’t wait until those things can come easily again.

But now, I feel just like Lavender, moving from person to person, making sure they’re ok and then then staring out at the outside world and waiting for everything to be complete again.