Life Lessons from a Pandemic: A Look Back
I’ve always been a strong believer that there is a lesson to be learnt from everyone we meet, everything that we see, and everything that we do. Life is for living, learning and loving, and even when times are uncertain, unstable or unprecedented, life is moving forward, lessons are being learnt, and love is carrying people through.
For the past two years, we’ve been in and out of lockdowns, and many of us have had our entire worlds flipped upside down due to illness, isolation, bereavement and the loss of the reality we once knew. People have left our lives, other people have entered our lives, all whilst we’ve been subjected to restrictions, rules and regulations that can and have changed at a moment’s notice. Two years in intermittent periods of isolation has given me more than enough time to reflect on life before COVID (is this the new BC?), and the life I want to lead post COVID, and there are five key lessons I’ve taken from the pandemic so far.
1. Slow Down (But Don’t Stop)
When the pandemic kickstarted in March 2020, I was working as a research assistant at a university and travelling across Europe for various freelance engagements. It was exciting, it was an adventure, but it was also totally exhausting.
The speed at which I was living meant that the only time I felt accomplished or happy with my life was when I had my next career opportunity come in – a conference acceptance, a presentation or another business trip. I didn’t know how to sit still and just be, and that’s something I’m still trying to learn now.
The world doesn’t have to be a hundred miles an hour, and whilst I may have the same number of hours in a day as Beyonce, I definitely do not have the same resources, so burning the candle at both ends only resulted in singed fingers. I’m learning to appreciate the smaller things in life, to stay in the present moment and just be, rather than plan the next five moves ahead and subsequently be disappointed when something gets in their way.
I’m making a point of celebrating my little wins and celebrating wins outside of my professional life (which is difficult as a PhD student when all of your value seems to be placed on how thin you can spread yourself without breaking – which involves celebrating the fact I successfully didn’t burn the house down making my first attempt at a new recipe, or that I didn’t completely collapse in my first spinning class.
2. Stop Overthinking (Not Everything Needs a ‘Reason’)
If I had to admit to having a bad habit, it would be that I’m a constant overthinker (and subsequently, a huge worrier). If a shop assistant was short with me, I would take it so personally – as if it wasn’t a million other factors potentially stressing the assistant out, but me, buying a pack of chewing gum.
Not everything is to do with you, or because of you, no matter how much you warp yourself to thinking that way. Overthinking, and subsequently, overcompensating by trying to control the world around me to make sure I wasn’t upsetting anybody (who probably weren’t even thinking about me) got so tiring that I constantly felt like I was letting everybody down when none of them had an expectation of me in the first place.
Sometimes, peoples actions and behaviours really aren’t about you, they’re about that person and how they’re feeling in their own little world and trying to control it or fix things for other people just becomes a waste of your time and energy. Things happen, good and bad, and you, unfortunately, can’t mitigate for every single event that might happen – so time spent trying to, is just wasted time.
3. Time is Precious (So Use It Wisely)
As an aftermath of the pandemic, most people are grieving somebody that they loved and lost in the last few years. I lost a close friend and mentor at the beginning of the pandemic and spent the majority of the subsequent lockdowns grieving and reflecting on the time that I didn’t get with that person, wishing that I’d told them how much they meant to me.
Pre-pandemic, life was a haze of living at a hundred miles an hour and promising myself that at some point in the near future, I’ll show those around me just how much I love them. But not now, because I’ve got work to do and ‘husting’ to get done.
Post-pandemic, I’m much more precious with my time – I find it easier to end friendships and relationships that have become stale and toxic, that I’m just keeping alive because of the sunk cost of shared history. After losing someone who changed my life for the better and not being able to give her flowers when they were due, I’m no longer spending my time with people or in situations that make me feel less than I am.
The old saying goes that “grief is just love with no place to go”, and I’m using that ‘leftover love’ for the things and people that make me want to be, and proactively try to be, a better person, whatever that may be.
4. Be Vulnerable (But Keep Some Boundaries in Place)
I went to therapy for the first time in a long-time last year, and I realised that my biggest fear probably isn’t horses or the dark like I once thought, but it’s the idea of being vulnerable – putting my cards on a table and having no place to hide.
I don’t like admitting that I’m not alright, and I don’t like letting new people in because I have a deep fear of them leaving. But people leave, that’s life. We grow and we change and we can’t expect to keep the exact same people around us forever, because that’s not how the world works.
Platonically and romantically, I’ve never found it easy to admit to myself (or other people) just how much people might mean to me because I never wanted someone to have ‘something’ over me, whatever that is.
In the light of the pandemic and this reckoning with my utter hatred of vulnerability, I’ve forced myself to become more vulnerable with those that I love. I admitted to my parents that I’d relapsed in my eating disorder and probably needed a little bit more support than I’ve ever wanted to ask for, and I admitted to my now partner just how much love I felt for him, at a time when I was on the verge of sending myself off to a convent for the rest of my life. I didn’t die from opening up, and actually, I felt much more supported and cared for when I admitted that maybe, I might not be the superhuman ice queen I tried to make myself out to be.
5. Take Chances (Take a Leap of Faith)
A long life isn’t promised, so waiting around for the perfect circumstance before doing those things you’ve always wanted to do just means that you’re wasting the time that you have now. Pick up that sport or hobby you’ve always wanted to try, learn that new language you’ve always fancied learning, try therapy or some form of self-help and self-care to deal with whatever it is you’re dealing with, tell that person that you love them and cut off those people that aren’t making you feel good.
You can’t turn back the clocks and undo the life you’ve lived up until this point, but you can pick up a paintbrush and start painting yourself the new life that you keep making Pinterest vision boards or ‘manifesting’ about right now.
In the past year, I took up running, started learning Russian and Albanian (and I start my Slovenian course next month), took up weightlifting, met up with strangers off the various Women’s only groups I’m in on Facebook for meals, drinks and walks around town, and said yes to many opportunities that scared the life out of me.
Life isn’t perfect, but it’s a life that I’m working on every single day, and I’m happy that I’m challenging myself to be better, rather than just setting a bunch of resolutions and never following through with them because I didn’t really want them in the first place.
Written by Geena Whiteman
Geena is a PhD student researching how young people are entering the workforce, particularly how they pursue entrepreneurship and what entrepreneurship means to them.
