Last week, I returned to the office working long days – going in an hour earlier and staying two hours later than I would have liked^[1]. Four days in a row! I actually did this back in March^[2] too, and that explains why there haven’t been any letters posted recently.

I got to thinking about two years ago and the state of my friends and acquaintances. As the song goes – some forever not for better^[3]. Of course, some lives have changed for better. This year sees the advent of graduations, births, and weddings among my circles of friends. I recently told one friend, “It feels like a year for change.”

I find it hard sometimes to figure out which things happened in 2020 and which things happened in 2021. Did we go to Florida in January 2020? No, that was 2021. Did I start this blog in 2020? No, that was 2021 too. When was the year of distress about Husband’s job? No, that was 2020. The timeline is confused in my mind, and in 5 years, I am sure all these events will have the metadata tag: during the pandemic^[4].

It was around a year ago, I was dealt a mental blow that has taken me a full year to recover from. Sometimes I think that was April 2020 instead of April 2021. I thought, being 51 at the time, I had it all under control. I had learned how to parent during a pandemic. I had become comfortable working at home. I was good with using the chat and the video call to connect with people. Until I wasn’t^[5]. During the past year, with the help of an awesome counselor^[6], I rebuilt my inner landscape. Not to be stronger, but to me more flexible and less vulnerable.

While the lessons, skills, and mental homework are important, the ENTJ in me sees the major change is letting go of my desire for things to be deterministic. I want there to be a right way and a wrong way to act. I want there to be a right way and a wrong way to react. I want there to be a set of rules that have low consequences for breaking and high rewards for following. And I want that set up to lead to happiness, security, adventure, peace, and success for everyone. That was my mental picture of the way to live in January 2020.

I like the concept of agency, but I understand agency is an illusion.

In the summer of 2020, I didn’t have the choice to leave the country and travel the world. Now, I will exit the US^[7] between 3 and 5 times before the end of the year. I can make plans. I can struggle with the choice to check a bag^[8]. I can struggle with the choice to attend the meeting from my living room or in a conference room in Bruchsal, Germany. I get to make the choice again. Me. I have agency back. Or so I like to think.

I do not have the power to set the choices I want to have. I have an opportunity to make choices within the boundaries set by the choices others make. That hasn’t changed. The last two years provided different choices, but there were still governments and organizations and businesses who used their opportunities to set limits^[9]. Or create safe spaces^[10]. Or provide goods and services^[11]. 

It was true then and it is true now. 

Perhaps a better way to view it is this which has stayed the same. Our choices take our potential and transform it to kinetic. Kinetic, in motion, transverses from our world into another’s world presenting a choice to someone we don’t know^[12]. Now they have a choice they didn’t have before.

As I read this letter^[13], it seems like a hodgepodge of ideas that don’t fit together. And perhaps that is the point. We are constantly in motion and that didn’t stop in March 2020. We have the potential to change the landscape, and that didn’t grow or decrease in March 2020. The bigger picture is the same now as it was then. I am not sure it is comforting, but for now, I think it is true^[14].

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^[1] A committee meeting in person!

^[2] March 2022

^[3] In My Life by the Beatles – yes, this is a letter about reflection.

^[4] In the great database of my mind anyway.

^[5] A virtual altercation with an acquaintance of an acquaintance brought me to my emotional knees. It also highlighted that virtual interactions have different pitfalls than in physical face to face.

^[6] Mental healthcare is important. I didn’t realize before I tried it that it works a lot like physical healthcare.

^[7] Via Iceland of course

^[8] See – https://lettersforzerrius.com/2021/01/16/do-i-check-a-bag-or-not/

^[9] Hello there testing to return to the USA.

^[10] Hello there mask mandates and vaccines.

^[11] Hello there Instacart and Uber Eats.

^[12] And never will.

^[13] Editing is a thing.

^[14] I am superstitious, so I can’t have 13 footnotes. Leave a comment! I’m interested in what you think.