A Purposeful Life

I took this photo about a year ago on a clear and crisp May evening at Folly Beach. It was one of those days that you realize the promise of summer is coming, gently at first…and then, without warning, it’s in like a lion.

Like many of us are now realizing, I took this and many other of my days for granted. I took my proximity to the beach for granted. I could, after all, go anytime I wanted to. My freedom to move around this planet on a whim was something I thought rarely about, if ever at all. What a luxury.

But now, I sit in my quarantined life on this gorgeous April day. The sun is shining and temperatures are climbing to the mid 80s this afternoon, creeping slowly into a reminder that summer is around the corner. Today is a perfect day to sit with my toes in the sand and breath in the fresh sea air. It’s just the kind of day I would be planning a picnic with friends, walking down the beach holding hands with my guy, or even heading there alone to be in stillness.

I miss the sea. I never thought about not having access to it much before. But I miss it. I want to breathe in the fresh, cottony air in my lungs and feel it wrap around my skin like cool summer sheets. I want to be itchy with salt and sand and sunburn on my shoulders. I want to hear the gulls squawk around me as they scavenge for the little scraps of food and crumbs we drop.

If there is anything this time has taught me, it’s that I want to live simply again, but with purpose. I want to live in the moments I took for granted with the people I assumed would always be there. I want to remember what actually matters. Freedom. Joy. Relationships. And good health.

Most of all, I just want my life to be purposeful - lived with love and simple pleasures.

This, too, shall pass.

This is what spring is supposed to feel like. Hopeful. Light. Bright. Colorful. And most of all, optimistic.

Instead, here we are, smack dab in the middle of a global crisis. GLOBAL. This isn’t just happening in our little worlds. It’s affecting everyone…everywhere. Lives are transforming daily because of this horrific situation.

It’s hard to find hope in this space we have landed in. It’s hard to look up and say - we’ve got this… Especially when our most basic of needs are being threatened on a massive level (seriously though, what’s with all the toilet paper hoarding?!?!). None of this is controllable. The only thing we can do to control it is to stay home, stay put, and stop the spread of the virus.

So I’ve been trying to do survive right now one day at a time. “What is true today? In this hour? In this moment?” These are questions I ask myself hourly right now. “What is real and honest? And what can I actually DO?”

Sometimes it’s as simple as taking a deep breath. Other moments I am talking myself off a ledge of despair because this all seems so big and overwhelming in so many ways. Honestly, I am just trying to be present and calm. I stay busy. I feed the people I love. I work hard at coming up with what’s next for work and life. I dream a little. And I make it through another day.

We all process stuff so differently. And this pandemic certainly has made me aware of that personally and with those that I love the most. I have watched my normally effervescent, joyful child become depressed as he is robbed of his senior year in high school. No prom. No final rugby games. No senior skip day. Nothing but the trauma of something he doesn’t understand presented with no options or end in sight. All the parts you look forward to all of high school - and dare I say most of his life - are completely gone for him. And that’s only a small consequence to the greater picture we are all dealing with right now like loss of jobs, loss of income, and, in some cases, loss of lives so precious to us.

All I can do is sit and be present with what is. I am not trying to negotiate my way out of it, but lean in to the fact that this is where I am. This is where we are. This is what is. And that this, too, shall pass.

Sending love and light to all that need it.