Who Will You Be After COVID-19?

For some, this is a period of intense tragedy, as they witness the illness or death of loved ones and friends.

For others, this is a time of deep economic uncertainty, because their businesses are closed or their livelihoods are curtailed.

For most, though, this is a strange and frustrating period where routines are disrupted and patience becomes increasingly thin.

Where are you?

If you’re in the first two groups, you have my empathy and prayers. As you probably know, I lost my Dad just weeks before all this began. So I’m no stranger to recent or sudden loss.

But if you’re in group three, and this is a big fat annoyance as opposed to something life-threatening or life-changing, my question for you is the headline this morning: who will you be when it’s over?

“Every adversity brings with it the seed of an equivalent advantage,” wrote Napoleon Hill in the granddaddy of all self-improvement books, Think And Grow Rich.

So how will you benefit from this experience?

I don’t mean benefiting financially. I mean how will you be a better or different person as a result of this unique period in our lives?

I like to jump on planes and go places and see people and run around and do stuff.

Right now, can’t.

So I’m spending a lot of time sitting and thinking.

Not staring at the news or sighing at the Dow.

Thinking about who I am, how I live, how my business runs, how I serve others.

I’m taking a course on Buddhism with Coursera.com. Not planning on changing religions; I just want to use this time to learn stuff.

The course is free and it’s taught by a Princeton professor. Not a bad thing to listen to as I walk around the reservoir in the morning.

I’m getting into something called the Alexander Technique and will start an online course on that early next month.

Trying to learn something here.

But most of all, I’m spending considerably more time with my family, since all six of us are here under the same roof.

We’ve been through crises before, you and I, personal, physical, geopolitical.

We know, you and I, that problems have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

And that at some point everyone will go back to work, to school, to camp, to restaurants, to Disneyworld.

When that moment comes, will you be the same old you, or will you have taken advantage of this time to grow, to better, to be more grateful, to be, well, whatever you want to be?

I belong to an organization that has one less A than the AAA, and I watch carefully on the Zoom meetings how people are coping with what’s going on.

It’s easy to see that those who are involved with helping others are having a much easier time of it than those who are wrapped inside themselves.

By the way, when I’m wrapped up inside myself, I make a very small package.

Yes, this is a period of illness and death, economic uncertainty, and so on.

But it’s also Spring, a time for renewal and rebirth.

When you emerge from the chrysalis of the COVID-19 shutdown, who will you be?