What story will you tell?
By: Michael A Browne
Tags: Reflections, Unemployment, Covid-19, Family

Stopping to stare at puddles on an empty Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis, MN

There are very few “shared experience” moments that unite all of humanity. Most in recent history are centric to one culture, one country, one community. And then there’s COVID-19.

Everyone’s experience is different, yet we’re all affected. From rural to urban, northern hemisphere to southern, and wealthy to poor countries, every single one of us can identify specific ways that our lives have changed.

A nd years from now, we will all tell a story… to our children, our grandchildren, to neighbors and spouses.

We will all reflect on this time and have something unique to say about how it affected our lives.

What’s unique about this shared experience, and is different from others, is that recent events have been short-lived. WWII lasted years, but occurred generations ago. 9–11 was a global moment, but immediately focused on the United States. Sports moments are fleeting and shallow in comparison; anything else that compares is local, regional, or partisan.

What’s different about COVID-19 is that it’s universal, but it’s a crisis that feels slow-moving.

It has introduced an eerie element of solitude and stillness, which runs contrary to our human instincts to fight and move and engage in battle at the sight of an enemy.

Due to the stillness and drawn-out nature of our required response, the unique aspect of this period in time is that we all get the chance to write our own narrative in real time. Which begs the question:

How do you want to remember this time?

What do you want to tell your children and your grandchildren about it? Do you want to tell stories about your community banding together and offering help? Do you want to talk about finding the end of Netflix? Do you want to reflect on the time as a period of personal growth and family togetherness?

I, for one, am not writing a story about hardship.

Yes, I was laid off. And my AirBnB income is gone. I’m not sure if my tenants will be able to pay rent, and I don’t know if my wife will deliver our twins in a hospital, alone, or with me by her side.

But no, that’s not the story I will tell.

I will instead regale in the new family rituals of long meandering morning bike rides with my son to see the eagles nest with three new babies by the river.

My wife and I will tell our future twins about how their grandmother came to visit for weeks to help out while mom felt too ill to get out of bed.

And during that time, we at breakfast in our tiny kitchen, we took photos of interesting places in the neighborhood, learned to play soccer, shared preschool story time on the computer, built cities with blocks and cars and dreamed up fabulous fantasies while talking through how much we miss hugs and play dates and playgrounds and picnics with friends.

We will tell the story of how, when offered such a rare opportunity to pause, that we took a collective breath together and focused our time and energy on being more intentional with our thoughts and actions.

And instead of rushing back in to the congestion and the consumption and the drama, we took the time to reflect and discuss what really matters.

All of our stories will be different. Many will be traumatic. Some will be heroic. Most will be somewhere in between.

Today is the day you get to ask yourself, what story will I tell?