Normally, I talk to you all about my coaching sessions and focus on that sort of development, but it’s hard to not notice that we are all struggling with what I can only call pandemic fatigue. For a lot of us, this is about how we are relating to our partners and other people who are close to us. So, to talk about how we are getting through this time, I am writing this piece with my partner Jesy, with whom I have been sheltering in place. If you’re getting through this time alone, this applies to you as well. I want this to be an honest accounting of how we are living now, so we're going to talk about it together.
First of all, pandemic fatigue is real. It’s not that we haven't been sick of being quarantined for a long time, but there's something extra about it now. For me, it's a year minus two weeks since I stopped doing coaching sessions in person. A lot of people’s lives just sort of came to a sudden halt at about that time. And our bodies keep track of that sort of thing. We’re hitting an important anniversary, a year since a dramatic change.
I'm reading this book, Survivor's Club, and it talks about people who have overcome great adversity. The people featured in it include POWs and a woman who lost 9 of her digits. And all of their stories are about the really challenging stuff that they work through. The key here is that they are working through these immense challenges. In fact, where scholars have taken a look at people who confront circumstances like these, to the extent they are able to take them on directly, the research shows that they end up thriving.
This is a challenging time, and I'm looking at reframing it as a situation where I look back and have all kinds of memories of how I have used it to have furthered myself in my development, and how people that I'm working with are using it to take the next steps in their life that maybe they didn't give themselves the opportunity to take before. To do this honestly, though, to really have developed, it’s impossible to ignore that this is happening in relationship to others, that this is happening in many cases under the same roof as another person’s growth and development and that we are also needing to work together.
COVID has meant that we are confronting ourselves and our relationship more than we ever have before. And we have done a lot of development work together over the years, but this is a new level of work. We have come face-to-face with ourselves.
You really, really get to know your partner in a time like this. You realize that in some deep way you haven't actually been living together. It’s not like we didn't fight before, for example, but I think our fights have been extra special. And when I say fighting, I mean like fighting for something that's bigger than just myself or George's self, fighting for a vision that takes us beyond ourselves and into radical collaboration and deeper intimacy.
Quarantining creates stress, which is a challenge, and the question is, how are you holding up against that challenge? How do you think about it? There’s something called the Stockdale Paradox, where there is a danger for the people who are too optimistic or falsely optimistic, who say, “Hey, by this date, everything's going to be back to normal.” The danger is that those are the people who don't do as well, because they often get to that optimism by denying reality. For example, the people who were in POW camps who would say, “We're going to be out of here by Christmas,” were the ones who didn't survive. The people who survive are the people who are like, “Yeah, we're probably going to be here for a long time.”
So, what we’re saying is that we have been willing to put everything into being right here, right now together, and not trying to pretend we’re not angry or not frustrated. We’re living in real life and not holding our breath until it’s over. Because it's reality and that’s never over for as long as we live.
And then we’re also saying you should connect with others about how you are surviving and let them know the same. It helps. Like comparing notes, honestly. Not just saying everything is fine, but saying everything is not fine and here is how we’re dealing with it.
We hope that this little bit of sharing might help you. It’s not easy, and it’s not pretty, but it is life, and it is worth fighting for.
