How I Found Clarity During The Pandemic

Twenty-twenty was a doozy of a year. Like many others, I fell into a bit of a funk when the pandemic hit because my life as I knew it had been completely turned upside down. I was uprooted from all of my favorite classes during my last semester of college and forced to continue on Zoom, which was no substitute for my highly interactive language classes. I left my job, with no real plan at all and was suddenly thrust into unemployment. Worst of all, I was stuck inside for weeks at a time with only my thoughts which drove me to the brink of insanity. Yet I was still one of the fortunate ones in that my husband never lost his job and we never had to worry about food and shelter like many other struggling families out there. We have been very blessed in this regard.

It took an immeasurable amount of courage to leave my job at a time when so many people were already struggling. The job was comfortably predictable, but it was also a toxic environment. It was hard, sweaty work with little satisfaction or financial reward. Employees were often at each other’s throats, and the overall morale could not be lower. At the time, the world was knee-deep into the pandemic. Even though I knew that once I left my job it would be difficult to find another one, I couldn’t force myself to continue on there.

When the beginning of 2021 proved to be in the same vein as 2020, I was disappointed to say the least. By chance, I ran across a book from a series that I hadn’t seen for quite some time. Chicken Soup for the Soul was a popular series when I was a teenager. There are countless books in the series, each with a different theme. After some internal debate, I decided to check this one out. Maybe, I thought, some of this advice could help me get out of this rut that I was in. I was still unemployed, and had watched an embarrassing amount of Netflix while I applied for jobs that I knew I would never hear back about.

This particular book (Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Best Advice I Ever Heard) turned out to be just the thing that I needed to wake me from the sleepwalk that I had been in over the course of the last year. One of the stories that stuck out to me was about a woman who always ate dessert first. Dessert was of course a metaphor for living life to its fullest, and I realized that I wasn’t doing that.

Knowing that I could not relate to the woman’s beautiful story, I had a moment of panic. I had to ask myself what I had been doing up to this point in my life. My answer left much to be desired. In truth, my problem had started well before the pandemic began. I had been working job after job, desperately combatting my own unhappiness and failing miserably. The pandemic had only exacerbated problems that were already there.

When I finally came to the realization that I would have to start all over again, I was forced to confront myself. What did I really want in life? Did I really want to take the safe path and work any job that popped up solely because it would make me money? What steps should I take to get the life that I want to live? Would I be good enough? All of these questions bombarded me at once, and I was forced to confront my fears. Since so much of my life had changed over the course of the pandemic, I couldn’t avoid the issue by thrusting myself into school and work like I have always done. It took me some time to see the silver lining in all of this: Although it was difficult at times, I gained a better understanding of myself because I was forced to face those difficult questions.

Since then, I have decided to set myself a New Year’s resolution (even if it’s coming a bit late). My resolution is this: to finally start loving myself by living the life that I have always wanted to live. All too often, we put our dreams on the backburner, and make excuse after excuse about why we can’t accomplish them. I have fallen into this trap more often than I would like to admit, but now I am taking a stand against it. Starting this year, I am going to travel, I’m going to write, and I am going to fill my life with things and people that make me happy. Unlike my resolutions of the past, I feel like this resolution is actually worth keeping. After all, if we don’t strive for happiness in life, then what is the point of it all?