As America Reopens - Will You Choose Love or Fear

For all its perils and devastations, Coronavirus has held up an incredible mirror to all of us, and the most frequent insight I hear is: The pace of shutdown is so much better and more satisfying than the pace of life before it. 

Now of course, we wish kids were in school. Of course, we wish our jobs were intact. Of course, we wish people were not dying of Covid-19.

AND we are spending more and better time with our kids. 

AND we are rethinking our boundaries at work. 

AND we are paying more attention to our hearts, our spirits and each other. 

This is a good thing, but in talking with hundreds of women over the past two months, their fear is real too.

“When we reopen, will we go back to business as usual?”

“Will the rat race ramp right back up?”

“I hope not because I can’t go back.’

You don’t have to go back, but it will take courage not to. 

Question: Why do we doubt our ability to maintain whatever pace we’ve discovered is best for ourselves and our families?

Answer: Because America is a hotbed of comparison and competition, the unspoken rule is to win the rat race or at least keep up at all costs. But when did we decide to live like rats? Or did the last 50 years of warp-speed human evolution choose it for us, without our consciousness or assent? Since that’s our default setting now and we equate our value with achievement and productivity, it makes sense that we race or die.

But Coronavirus has woken many up to the fact that we are not rats, and we aren’t what we do, and maybe we don’t need things we thought we couldn’t live without. That one thought bears the seeds of revolution.

Maybe I can live differently.

So now that the rat race is coming back online, what will you do? 

One of my clients started crying when I asked her that. 

“I can’t do it,” she said. “I can’t go back to the way I was before."

Ok, but why are you crying?

She’s not sure she has a choice.

That’s Fear Talking

For most of us, fear is like an operating system creating an internal, low-level hum of anxiety that we rarely evaluate with our rational minds, but regularly feel in our bodies.

“If I slow down, I’ll get behind at work and lose my job.” 

“Setting boundaries with my boss who texts on weekends will cost me a promotion.”

“If my kid doesn’t play three sports and two instruments, she’ll fall behind and not get the scholarship she needs for college.” 

Truthfully, all those things could happen. Particularly if you accept that you have agency over your life and start making decisions accordingly. It will probably cost you something, but what might you gain?

Peace? Contentment? Better relationships? Less clutter? Less debt? Better sleep? A healthier body?

Of course, this sounds aspirational, but isn’t this the life to which God calls us?

It takes courage to go off script, to step out of the rat race, and yet we deeply admire people who do. 

Why not you?

Years ago I had a dream where a young woman I didn’t know was stewing over a decision she had to make. She explained the dilemma and I remember saying to her:

“I don’t know what you should do, but I know that every decision I’ve ever made out of fear was the wrong one.” 

So when/if the opportunity arrives to ramp up and rejoin the rat race, remember you have a choice. 

Love or Fear. 

Maybe love over fear looks like telling your boss you aren’t on call on weekends anymore. Is that scary or is it an empowering admission that your family is more important than your boss?  

Will you really lose your job over it? Take a close look at it, what’s the actual likelihood? 

Is it long past time to move on from that soul-sucker anyway? How might you do that?

We’re scared to ask these questions because we’re afraid to admit what we already know. THIS ISN’T WORKING FOR ME. 

Plus, America is an expensive place, and that’s scary too, but people have made big moves in order to live love over fear and they were usually better off for it, even if it was rocky at the start.

So as the world reopens, can you make choices based on love for yourself and the humans in your life?

What do we need most? What is best for us?

Running ragged seven days a week, fast food in the car, with mom on the phone and dad on his laptop at the game, yelling in traffic, in debt up to our eyeballs keeping up with the fictitious Joneses? 

Is that the best thing?

You have more agency than you think to decide what your life should look like. Seize it, and while it may cost you something, it might be something you don't want anymore anyway.