While we as a community of humans fight another infection and (many of us) stay home with good intentions, what will it take for us to live well, personally and with each other? If we neglect the needs of the heart now, we and our relationships will erode. We must find a way to keep heart.
Here are more thoughts on the serious business of living with heart amidst the challenges of a quarantine.
Find, Explore, and Renew Your Purpose
Too often we gain our sense of purpose from external circumstances. Or should we say: Our schedule owns us. Work, commitments, the needs of others, and activities all pose as both opportunities and pitfalls in the search for purpose.
For many, the quarantine erased built-in accountability.
Hey, I don’t have to shower before work! Or brush my hair! Or wear deodorant?
The kids don’t really have to wake up before 7 or 8 or 11:59 am, do they?
I will just quietly slip out of this video conference call.
The lack of structured, in-person accountability might have been fun at first: First time ever we are encouraged to sit on our couch all day, right?
But a few weeks in, apathy threatens, and some have subscribed to it.
When your routine changed due to the quarantine, did you lose your sense of identity?
A friend told me he stumbled around in a fog for those first few days. Yesterday I awoke and stepped into the day with the thought: Haven’t I lived this day before? Will anything be different today than yesterday?
In the movie Groundhog Day, Phil Connors (Bill Murray) is a hilarious TV weatherman forced to live and relive the same day over and over again. He wakes up every 24 hours trapped in the same day. “I Got You Babe” and a good morning from the radio DJ repeat themselves. He sees the same people saying and doing the exact same things. And then again. And again. And again.
Once he learns he is caught in a time loop, he abandons his morals, respect for others, and eventually his desire to live. In short, he loses his purpose. His days becomes meaningless. His relationships become a game. At his darkest moments, death becomes his best attempt to escape.
When we lose our purpose, we run the risk of losing our heart.
If your old routine is gone, it’s time to find, explore, or renew your purpose.
We do not need our old routine to have purpose. The redemption in Groundhog Day comes when Phil decides to find meaning in a story larger than himself in spite of a repetitive day which seemingly revolves around him.
He becomes more of the man he is made to be. He reinvents himself as a creator and a relator. He studies a new language and learns to ice sculpt and play the piano. He develops empathy. He explores his own gifts, passions, and talents and then selflessly gives them away. He finds a new depth of connection and relationship.
To his surprise, his new purpose leads to a joy which makes life worth living.
True purpose starts from the inside and works its way out. This is hard to remember when our lives are so busy. Perhaps it takes a quarantine to remind us we need not depend on external circumstances to define us.
As you are no longer able to attend to your regular routine, consider: have I lost the ease of circumstances which determined my purpose? Did I let the demands of my old routine dictate who I am?
If so, you have a great opportunity: you get to reassess why you do what you do. For (hopefully) a short amount of time, you have built-in permission to:
1) Live at a slower pace.
2) Consider the reason you exist.
3) Decide what you want to do about it.
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