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…
