2020 sure has been full of unexpected and uninvited events, hasn't it? With all of the chaos we have been experiencing this year (and it isn't over yet, far from it), many people have faced unexpected challenges, such as loss of life or loved ones, loss of employment, loss of social activities, loss of freedom, loss of joy. That is a lot of loss. It is hard to feel pleasure, joy, happiness, or hope when the shit show just seems to get worse every time you utter "It cannot get any worse, right?" This blog has been all about finding ways to strengthen our resilience when there is so much chaos and uncertainty around us. So, no, this is no surprise to any of you reading this post. But, today I want to talk about the chaos through a different lens.
Today, I want to talk about this from a more distal perspective, a fly-over, if you will.
Let's think about 2020 as an unexpected road trip, full of obstacles along the way. If you have ever taken a long road trip, you know that there are always unexpected obstacles. I just took a road trip myself, traveling from my home in Georgia to my home in California, to be with my husband, whom I had not seen in 9 months. It was an interesting road trip with my puppy, Gussie and I traveling for 4 days, through 8 states. During a pandemic. To be covid careful, I preplanned the route and booked hotels along the way that were well rated for covid precautions. I carried hand wipes and Lysol spray with me everywhere. I wore a mask and gloves to refuel the car, brought a cooler full of food for both of us, and, well, let's just say my trail running skills came in handy when I needed to empty my bladder without using a public restroom. Not one public restroom was used in 4 1/2 days! :) I am rather proud of that fact, which is probably strange to anyone who doesn't know me, but not surprising to anyone who does. I digress.
Unexpected obstacles on a road trip. Construction. Closed rest areas and gas stations. Busy refueling locations. Car accidents, traffic jams, and detours. Sounds a lot like a metaphor for life, especially right now. The key to surviving a road trip with all of these obstacles is to slow down, build in extra time, expect the unexpected, and recognize that you may have to change the route or the time line along the way. That is what our lives are like right now! Detours, traffic jams, closed *everything*. So, how do we use this to navigate our chaotic 2020 with resilience? The same way we navigate that road trip.
Construction. Sometimes we need to lay new roadways for our lives, when the old ones are no longer functioning properly. Career transitions. Changes in living arrangements. Changes in college plans. These may be short lived changes, more like detours, or they may be long term, more permanent changes. That is okay. Even if it doesn't feel like it right now. I am reminded of the research on adult unemployment, specifically the research that looks at well-being during economically difficult times. When people are worried about losing their job, most report more perceived stress during the time when they are worried about losing their job than they report after actually losing their job. Both are stressful. Of course! But, it appears, from the research, that waiting and worrying about whether or not you will lose your job is in some ways more stressful than actually losing it.
Don't get me wrong. I am not minimizing the stress of actually losing your job. That is awful. I am simply saying that worrying about it, or waiting for it to happen is in some ways more stressful.
Construction can provide opportunities for us to reevaluate our lives and think about fresh starts, new roads, or new destinations. Our attitude about construction can play a huge role in the outcomes: We can fight the construction because we don't like change, or we can be a part of the construction team, planning the changes and acknowledging the change can be good. Not easy, but good.
Closed (rest areas, gas stations, restaurants on the road) opportunities. This year has resulted in a lot of lost opportunities, mostly because of the huge economic cost of a pandemic. We can grieve the loss of those opportunities, and maybe hope that they return after the world recovers from this tragic time in history. We can also look forward, in search of new opportunities to replace those lost. Take your time with the grieving process, slow down and fully feel that loss. Then get up and move forward. During my recent road trip, I would get excited for my puppy to get out of the car when I saw an upcoming rest area, and then experience the disappointment when I saw the road blocks refusing us entry. I would speed up again, get back in traffic, say a few unrepeatable words, and then move forward in search of another spot to give Gussie her much needed reprieve from the car. Move forward.
(Car) Accidents. Mistakes happen. We try a new strategy and it doesn't work. That happens. It isn't a failure unless you don't learn from it, or unless you give up. I am reminded of the research on failure- there is a lot of it, and some of it is part of my research. I often talk to my students about embracing failure instead of being ashamed of it. Not searching it out, of course, but if we embrace challenges and changes with all of our energy as opportunities for personal growth, sometimes we will fail. Fail is simply our First Attempt In Learning, a nice acronym for the word FAIL. So, get up, brush off, assess the damage, call your insurance company/family/support system to help with the damage, and then... keep trying. Learn from the mistakes and accidents. We all came into the world with limited abilities. We couldn't walk or talk or feed ourselves. I think it is safe to safe if you are reading this right now, you have mastered those skills by now. :) Practice + effort = improvement. Failure is just one step along the way to improvement.
Detours. Detours are not typically well announced. I planned my recent road trip well, I think. I used AAA to plan my route, using their 'trip tik' resources, along with Google Maps every morning, to confirm that day's route. All that planning, and there were still a couple of detours I hadn't planned. What do you do with a detour? Well, some of those road trip detours were met with a few select words that I uttered rather loudly at my windshield, but it didn't change the fact that I had to detour.
Life gives us detours sometimes. We can either drive through the detour sign, hell bent on staying the course, or we can follow the signs, slow down, take a breathe, detour, knowing full well that the detour will ultimately take us back to our original route. At some point.
I am reminded of a detour I tried very hard to avoid in graduate school. I had a plan, a time plan, and a budget for finishing graduate school. Which is, in retrospect, sort of laughable. I was raising 3 teenagers as a single mother, going to graduate school, in a state very far away from family. It was NOT EASY. And it was EXPENSIVE. And it was HARD. I just knew I had to finish according to my timeline, my plan. But dissertations don't follow timelines. Mine didn't, and very few do. I was crushed when I hit a detour (it wasn't the first detour, but that is another story for another day), and I kept trying to drive through the signs, hell bent on finishing according to MY timeline. In my defense, I had good reason to be so set on finishing on that timeline. I had a budget for myself and those 3 kids, and it wasn't going to be replenished if I didn't finish on time, so there were some hard realities with that timeline that caused me a lot of stress. Nonetheless, the detour remained, and I finally surrendered to it. I had to make some adjustments to accommodate that detour, but the surprising thing for me was that once I made the adjustments, and accepted the detour, I experienced less stress about it. The dissertation was great, and I earned my PhD. A little later than planned, but I still earned it!
Maybe your detour is not that easy to adjust to, but my experience, and the research on obstacles and goal adjustments suggests we can save ourselves a lot of stress if we recognize that some detours, most detours, are necessary, and typically lead us back to our original plan with few alterations. Our lives are less stressful when we make that decision to accept the detour. And sometimes, not always, but sometimes, the detour provides a landscape that is beautiful, unexpected of course, and may provide much needed nourishment (emotionally, or otherwise). Embrace the detour.
So, 2020 is our road trip. It still isn't over, and actually will probably extend well into 2021. It is like the road trip that goes on way too long.
Your butt is sore, your back hurts, your mind is ready to get the hell outta here, but the road still remains, the ETA unknown.
But, we can get out of the car for scheduled rests to ease our achy body and breathe in some fresh air.
We can frame our attitude to expect delays, accidents, detours, and construction.
We can have a plan for our lives on this road trip, but we will be less stressed out if we accept that shit will continue to happen, and if we recognize that, we will be less stressed when it does happen.
Expand your time line: have a soft ETA.
Be willing to accept the detours if they pop up.
Don't drive over that detour sign hell bent on finishing as planned. Take the detour, or choose which detour you want to drive if there are options (there typically are options....).
Google maps (life) may be providing one very clear detour, but if you take some time, you can probably come up with several on your own.
You choose the route.
This will give you a sense of control over the road trip, which is hard to come by right now. So much is happening in this road trip shit show of 2020 that feels out of our control, we need to grab those opportunities when we can!
But balance them with a little bit of acceptance that even the best planned road trip will have closed rest areas. And that is when those life skills (aka trail running skills) come in really handy.
Get creative.
Pee in a cup. You've got this.
Be well, stay safe, and take care.