A thought that I have been trying to push back for a better time keeps resurfacing more and more frequently. I’m ashamed to say that I’ve been thinking more and more about the reality of our family making our annual pilgrimage to our ‘holy place’ in New Brunswick Canada. I keep seeing positive messaging in social media giving us permission to mourn the loss of things like graduations, summer vacations and weddings and while I do feel like these are all valid reasons to grieve, doesn’t it all seem pretty trivial in the grand scheme? I find it difficult to live in the present because a lot of my efforts and thoughts are spent looking forward to what’s to come, planning and preparing and hoping that whatever semblance of control I have over the future I can use to my advantage. This pandemic has stripped me of my ability to do that and in a strange way, almost like hard-core exposure therapy, I have been finding that the most effective use of my time is trying to be in the now. To be academic for a moment, it’s almost like a paradigm shift because my entire belief system, which revolved around anticipation (and sometimes anxiety) has now shifted to a more immediate concern for where I am and what’s happening around me. The notion that I can just change my surroundings or my circumstances to improve my situation is no longer a helpful coping strategy. I can’t fill invisible needs with retail therapy and drive through coffees or even hold onto the feeling that the two weeks of vacation in my favourite place on the planet can give me for an entire year until the next time I can go back. And now I’m back to where I started, wondering what is our new purpose in this world that will probably never be the predictable, routine place I think we’ve all realized now we took for granted 🙃