gratitude-a-thon day 2099: this is what we do

May 4, 2020, We’re still pandemicing. The president is still vomiting blatant lies on the daily and there are people in certain states that are protesting because they want to die, I mean reopen for business. The weather in New England is the stuff we wait for all year, sunny with no humidity, no bugs yet. Pure heaven. It seemed everybody was outside this weekend reminiscing about when life was normal.

The sun helps. Flowers help. And masks help, but it seems only 50% of the people are wearing them. It’s a strange time. I still wake up and wonder if I’m having one of those dreams directed by Ridley Scott that seem so damn real,  you think they are.

The longer this goes on, the more I realize that things will not be anywhere near ok for a long time. What we’re experiencing will continue to haunt us for years to come. How do we cope?

We put one foot in front of the other foot, don our masks, and move forward on whatever new paths we can forge. We hold out the past, but only the good parts, and create new ways of living that might even be better for our earth and our souls. We say thank you regularly, to people who were once looked down upon. We go deeper into ourselves and while we are distanced from those we love, we hang on to them like a dinghy someone throws you in the middle of a raucous sea, when it was clear you were seconds away from drowning. We reinvent, we rediscover, we recalibrate. We get crafty, we become frugal, we laugh more. We listen to the birds, and the dogs, and the scientists We listen to ourselves and the teeny voice inside us that says, “It’s ok, we will be ok.” We stop thinking we will ever be the old normal and start making a new normal, a better normal, a normal that is anything but normal, but in the very best ways.

And we feel gratitude for what we have, not what we don’t have. We will ourselves to begin again and be happy that we can. This is what we do when we dont know what to do. We begin again. This is what we do.