In the chrysalis

We talk about going after your dreams, but sometimes you’ve just got to sit on them and keep them warm. (Image by Sharon King)

Back when I worked six/seven days a week and had no life and no hobbies, I didn’t understand the benefit of taking time off.

I saw only what it would cost me; I didn’t know that, in addition to the obvious pleasures of rest and relaxation, time away would actually make me more effective in my work.

Now, I marvel at how taking an afternoon or a day or a week to completely disconnect from work will result in a surge in productivity, creativity, and satisfaction when I return.

And of course, working through the weekend, no matter how much I enjoy it, results in a familiar listlessness and discontent come Monday. I have learned this lesson over and over, but I repeat the foolishness from time to time.

The bigger lesson that I’ve learned over and over is that I will not be able to predict the material benefit of the downtime. I won’t know what insights I will gain until later. There’s an act of trust involved in believing that my time away constitutes an investment in the future in addition to a valuable experience in itself. I end my workweek on a Friday afternoon, feeling weary and worn and unable to solve the problems I encountered over the course of the preceding days, and consciously step away. And on Monday, I am refreshed and ready. A solution — or at least, the clarity to find it — awaits. Decisions that I had been stuck on can now be made. I am moving forward.

The experience is so magical that I can treat vacation, weekends, or even a good night’s sleep like a wishing well. I can usually get the answers I ask for. But in the hardest times, I don’t know what questions to ask. I don’t even see how to define my problem. During those periods, I have no way to measure progress. I might keep moving or I may let go completely and take a break. There’s a sense of dormancy — a feeling of winter. It’s time to settle in and wait.

This is the situation in which humanity finds itself in 2020. So many of the merry mechanisms that have kept us humming along have ground to a halt. We must slow down, draw inward, and erase every last party, celebration, and travel plan from our calendar. It’s the grocery store and the living room for us, plus the park if we’re lucky.

There is grief, loss, and fear — and it’s all the more frustrating because there’s no way to know how long it will last. We’ve already been doing this for so long. We had dared to be hopeful, and now those hopes are dashed. Now what?

I have no answer to that question. But it has begun to occur to me that the entire pandemic period might parallel my experience of taking some time off. No, most of us aren’t on vacation. But we’re having a “time out” from life as we had come to know it. A break from the choices we are used to being able to make, the places we’re accustomed to being able to go, and the people we would normally see. What could happen as a result?

Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez, who are known for their brilliant fashion and culture commentary, have been sharing their observations about the way celebrities have been dressing during the pandemic. Yesterday, they offered a hopeful glimpse at a possible future, heralded by an overdesigned pair of Versace boots: “The new Roaring Twenties are about to start and folks want to dress like there’s a party just waiting to happen.”

Can you see it? Can you hear the way the history books and documentaries will talk about the art and fashion and music and films and books of the post-pandemic period? Can you visualize the social movements and the transformation of community life, education, and commerce that will follow this time of restriction? Can you picture the parties? It makes perfect sense.

Individually and collectively, we are not just stuck and hopeless. We’re in a chrysalis, awaiting the moment when we’ll burst forth in a changed state that we can only imagine right now. We don’t know what it will look like, but it is going to happen. It always does. I know this from my own life, and I know this from my study of history. There will be an “after.”

I don’t know how we’re going to get from where we are to where we want to be. I don’t even know how I’m going to do that in my own life. But I know that the process of growth and change is not linear. There are times to move forward, times to hold steady, and times to retreat and reevaluate. We won’t know, except in retrospect, what we gained when we seemed to be doing nothing or even sliding backwards. All we can do is make the best of the present moment — and, if it helps, to dream of what we could be someday, when we emerge, forever changed, from our confined spaces.