Silver Linings

I spent the first week of quarantine in a sea of self-pity.

For context, I’m a second semester senior at Sarah Lawrence College. 

When my school announced that we were going online for the rest of the semester, I was back home in Chicago for spring break. Within a 48-hour period, I flew back to New York, packed up everything I owned, rushed to say goodbye to my friends and classmates, and bid farewell to the school that had been my home for the past four years. When I came back home, I was reeling from all of the unprocessed change and emotions. 

I couldn’t believe my time at Sarah Lawrence was ending like this. I had lost a lot of concrete things, my internship, job offers, and my graduation ceremony.

But, I came to realize that it wasn’t the loss of these things that I was mourning. Instead, sadness overtook me when I thought about all of the feelings I was looking forward to.

At the beginning of the school year, I had made a “feelings bucket list” for my senior year.

This list included the feeling of accomplishment as I turned in my last research project. The feeling of talking with my professors for the last time, trying to put into words how much they have shaped me as an individual. The feeling of walking through my campus with my friends, nostalgic but triumphant because we did it. The feeling of “I did it.”

What complicated this even more is the fact that I am the first in my family to go to college in this country. My immigrant parents and I navigated the entire college preparation and application process together. No matter how challenging or frustrating it got, I knew that it would be worth it. I knew that they were proud of me.

I was looking forward to graduation so that I could show my diploma to my parents and say, “we did it.”

But now, that moment has been taken away.

That’s the unfortunate reality of this pandemic. Everyone has lost something. People have lost their jobs, their education, their freedom, and in the most heartbreaking circumstances, people have lost loved ones to COVID-19. 

We are all at the mercy of this thing that is bigger than us, unsure of when any of this will end. 

We’re all concerned about the future; what will life look after post-pandemic? 

But right now, all we can do is sit at home. 

After the initial self-pity subsided, I took the time to reflect on how I wanted to move forward. I realized that I wanted to use this time to grow. To invest in myself as a human being and to learn how to fill my own cup.

Time has been the greatest gift. It has given me the space to explore myself in a new context, to take in all of these lessons I’m given every day. 

Each day is different, but the silver linings of the situation keep presenting themselves. I have an indefinite amount of time with my family now, which is something that I didn’t have before. I read, journal, and meditate. I actually get a full night’s sleep now, which is something I DEFINITELY didn’t have in college. I can go to my backyard and dance for twenty minutes just because I want to. I wake up every morning to watch the sunrise and every evening I go outside to watch the sunset. The sky looks different every night; I’m so grateful I get to see it all.

I’m still worried about the future. Every day I see a new article with updates on the pandemic. Sometimes it’s hopeful, sometimes it makes me feel helpless. But I’ve learned to just take it one day at a time, focusing on the silver linings of each day. 

Plus, knowing that we are collectively working towards a healed future brings me a lot of peace and hope for the capacity of what humanity can accomplish. 

So, I do my part. I stay inside, I wash my hands. I try to advocate for those who need it. And I look for the silver lining every day.

What silver linings have you found?