I won’t lie. I have been struggling mightily lately. The state of this country has left me bereft. I have had trouble sleeping and focusing. I have floundered to find my footing and a way forward. 

But don’t worry, this isn’t an essay about politics or the state of affairs; it’s about not wasting our time.

I have an ongoing conversation with college friends on an app called Marco Polo.

We trade simple video notes that wait patiently until we have the time to listen. And the platform is there when we have the inspiration to share. Lately, I have been getting on my stationary bike, and while riding, I share my thoughts with them, sometimes just talking to make sense of it all for myself.

And what came out earlier this week was: I don’t want this time we are in to feel like COVID. That time, understandably, felt like life was on hold, but it wasn’t. Time kept passing, and our life kept unfolding.

Much to my dismay, at the end of the COVID lockdown, I was still 2 years older but didn’t feel like I had lived them as I had hoped. 

Don’t get me wrong—I still did some fun things during those years, but they were disjointed and clumsy. I look back and have some regrets, but it was also my first pandemic – maybe I can cut myself some slack.

And alas, here I am again in an uncomfortable place that feels uncertain and polarizing. But this time, I am older and theoretically wiser. I have lived through the plague, so there’s that.

I know my time on this Earth will tick by regardless of how I feel about the circumstances. This will be another dot on the timeline of my life, just like my 16th birthday, buying my first home, losing people I loved, and graduating from college. We all have these markers in our life. Each one leaves its impression. Each one changes us and evolves us. It makes us grow and forces us to shift. If you zoom way out on anyone’s life, that’s what the lived experience truly is: circumstances and occurrences that happen to you, for you, and about you until the end.

This brings me back to the questions I have been asking myself, grasping for answers in the dark.

How can I find joy anyway? 

How can I lean into courage? 

How can I navigate this time in such a way that I can hopefully reflect back at some point and witness my fortitude and willingness to forge ahead even though I was unsure and at times fearful?

How can I keep fully living? How do I find balance? 

These are questions that we ask ourselves at all crossroads. And yet, they feel more urgent at this time.

I know we’ve made it to the place in an essay or a musing where the author typically hands you the answer after stringing you along for several paragraphs and offers you a resolution. But that won’t be the case here. And besides, you may be feeling far different at this moment. You may feel that your prayers have been answered. Even if you think like me, your solutions will be different. Your balance and your better angels will have different tipping points and guideposts.

No matter where you are in life, you can’t bow out. You can’t throw in the towel because you cheat yourself. You won’t see how capable you are if you quit before you begin. You won’t see how the stardust you are made of shines in someone else’s darker times. We are beacons of light for ourselves and each other.

This isn’t only true of today. It’s true of always. It will be true next week, next year, and long after you and I are gone. Every day, regardless of what transpires around us, we humans are gifted the opportunity to be extraordinary. That can arrive in the mundane or the magnificent but extraordinary we can be.