Photography by Lori K. Tate
The other day I was making my normal spinach salad for lunch when I discovered that I forgot to boil eggs for it. (Let’s be honest, a meal planner I am not, so some days I have boiled eggs in the fridge and some days I don’t.) Regardless, I was craving them, and I didn’t have time to boil new ones.
As I frantically searched our fridge for a boiled egg miracle, I started getting mad because this was just one more thing in 2020 that was going wrong. After looking for eggs with the tenacity of a narc, (drumroll please) I found one. The amount of joy I felt upon my discovery was ridiculous, and it made me realize how the pandemic has affected my expectations.
I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m swimming through mud on a daily basis. I try to rally a positive attitude every morning, but within a few hours (sometimes minutes) things begin to unravel. Whether it’s a friend’s diagnosis, a parent’s new ailment, a house repair, a new state mandate, a lost shoe or a celebrity death (the passing of Eddie Van Halen shattered my heart), something pops up to eclipse any light that was trying to come through. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t expect things to work when I plug them in, and I assume that any plans I make will be cancelled.
Though this is not the best place to be, maybe it’s where I need to be to get to where I’m supposed to be. Confused yet? Hear me out. The past year and a half for me has been rife with loss. I lost my mom within six weeks of her cancer diagnosis, and six months later the world shut down due to COVID-19. It’s easy to get upset and feel sorry for myself, and I’ve done that — a lot. But what I’m realizing is how this virus has changed how I deal with things.
Yes, I got inappropriately frustrated looking for a boiled egg, but when I found it, I didn’t just shrug my shoulders and say, “cool.” I was elated. This egg meant more to me than a bracelet from Tiffany’s. I took it as a sign that hope was not lost. It might be hard as hell to find in 2020, but it still exists. Our world is so broken right now, making it easy to notice every little thing that goes wrong, but it works both ways. Because so many things are bad right now, the smallest good thing becomes magnified.
Prior to COVID-19, I would have been happy to find a boiled egg for my salad, but the level of gratitude I experienced wouldn’t have been there. These days I feel gratitude when I can do anything remotely normal — dropping my kids off for two days of school a week, doing something outside with a small church group (masked, of course), running into a friend at the grocery store (six feet away, of course), walking my dog, driving down the street listening to Christmas music, the list goes on.
An acquaintance recently told me that we have to look for pockets of joy right now, but I think we have to look for them whether there’s a pandemic or not. Even though I write a blog about this very thing, I wasn’t nearly as good at finding Winks (or pockets) as I am now. After ten months of strangeness, surrealism and grief, I’m starting to get the hang of it.
Finding the extraordinary in the ordinary is a talent, a gift, a superpower even. If you can appreciate the tiny things that are good in your life, think of the power and happiness that can generate. It’s a completely different way to fight the coronavirus, and it’s something we can practice when we’re beyond this pandemic.
It’s hard to imagine what life will look like when this is over, but the ability to notice and appreciate the smallest things will sweeten whatever world we’re left with. So yes, I will continue swimming through mud, looking for pockets of joy wherever I can find them. That’s where I need to be, and I’m grateful I’m getting there.