Do the Thing
This isn’t a gap year. It’s your life, and it counts.
This year, at age 43, I decided to take up roller-skating. My neighbor and I put on disco music and skate in her alley as part of what we’ve called Quarantine Skate Club. I’m getting pretty good at turning, and even skating backwards, while laughing very hard at myself.
But sometimes, when I’m pulling off my skates, I find myself wondering: Is this okay? Should I feel guilty about enjoying life when things are hard? At a time of mass grief, is it selfish to think about our own happiness?
In these moments, I try to recall an insight I had while writing my latest book. Put simply: Life doesn’t give you extra credit for being miserable. Flashes of relief, even joy, give us the strength to show up for ourselves — and for each other.
As the poet Toi Derricotte once wrote, “Joy is an act of resistance.” In 2020, joy is defiant.
Since the pandemic broke out in March, the litany of bad news has grown so long, we risk becoming numb to it. This has been a year of conversations I didn’t anticipate having with my children — about “tender age” shelters, about police brutality, about why they cannot go to school. And now, with the stress of the election looming and the temperatures dropping, I feel myself bracing against the unknown. What will next year — and the next four years — look like? Or even the next few months? Joy is going to be even harder now.
After the shutdowns of spring, the summer cracked open a door to our old lives, letting in light through its narrow sliver. Many of us were able to enjoy some semblance of normalcy thanks to fresh air: enjoying a meal on a restaurant patio, meeting friends for socially distanced get-togethers in a park, even going to the beach.
That slightly ajar door is closing again. But it struck me, picking apples with my kids the other day, smiling and soaking up the fall sunshine: We don’t have to put off feeling joy because of the terrible things. This life is a one-off. Even when there is suffering, there is relief. We should enjoy our lives, the only lives we have, while we can.
So do the thing. Meet your best friend for a coffee or a cocktail at an outdoor patio. (Yes, wear your mask on the way there and…
