• This Month on WestView News
  • Featured
  • Monthly Columns
  • Editorials
  • Articles
  • Briefly Noted
  • WestViews
  • Photos
  • Front Page
  • About Us
  • Subscribe
  • Advertise
  • EXTRA
WESTVIEW NEWS
Menu
  • This Month on WestView News
  • Featured
  • Monthly Columns
  • Editorials
  • Articles
  • Briefly Noted
  • WestViews
  • Photos
 › Covid › Silver Linings

Silver Linings

Web Admin 08/06/2020     Covid

By Christina Raccuia

For many of us, this crisis has forced us to change direction. Many of my friends and patients have lost jobs, businesses, investments, and loved ones. Familiar routines are gone, and the security many people felt before was gone in an instant.

While there is a great deal of tragedy in the pandemic—and I don’t want to be careless about the reality and loss many people are experiencing—there is another reality that is beginning to emerge from the pandemic. Perhaps this crisis presents an unexpected opportunity.

Is it possible to find a silver lining in the dark cloud of COVID-19?

We are now more than 3 1/2 months into our own Control-Alt-Delete experience of sheltering at home. Adrenaline might still be high from the sudden change, but maybe our minds are calm enough to evaluate and reconsider.

Could we harness this unexpected and unwanted crisis and tame it for a better future for us and our families? One thing is for sure, things will never be the same. The only real question is, how will they be different for you?

  1. Life Really Is More.

Life is more than earning a ton of money, more than pursuing vain success, and so much more than amassing material possessions.

For some of us, what we have been chasing has been stripped away in an instant—and now we are left with a longing for what is truly important. Others of us have now been forced to hit the pause button long enough to let the dust settle in our lives and see what a mess we’re making.

For me, it’s more clear than ever that life is found in love for others, in kindness and generosity, in relationships with family and friends, and in the pursuit of my spirituality and self care.

I have to find a way to remove what is distracting me from these essential things and continue to hear this call clearly even when things return “back to normal.” Life is so much more. 

  1. Life Is To Be Lived—Right Now. No More Waiting.

Life was moving at a blistering pace when the virus hit and slowed things down in a hurry. The good thing is—it has been driving home the importance of living now and not just waiting to live later.

Later might never come. Or perhaps even worse, it might come and I wasted years getting there. It’s too easy to just let life happen to us.

The virus has helped me to be more grateful for what I have, for the important work I get to do, for the health I have to do it, and for the resources I have to live simply with the ones I love around me.

My new normal cannot be filled with wasted effort or trivial pursuits. Regardless of how much time and energy I spent building my old life, if a better one presents itself, I must choose it.

However many more days, weeks, or years I am afforded, I want them to be lived on purpose with purpose.

How about you? 

 Previous Post

Looking Back from Life

Next Post 

Then&Now: Children’s Aid Society on Sullivan Street

Related Articles

What I Learned Navigating a Community Organization During a Pandemic
What I Wanted for Christmas Was a Vaccine
Pandemic Profiles: Who Are the Contact Tracers?
Vaccines: What to Know
From Community to Confinement: An Inside Look at a Senior Home Grappling With the Pandemic
Stress and Abnormal Behavior in Children During the COVID-19 Pandemic
The Retail Fight to Survive COVID-19
Pandemic: Yet Another Tremor for Foster Care Youth
Art Under Plague: Galleries in Greenwich Village During the Pandemic
“Time is on the Side of Change” —RBG
Letter from a NYC Ex-Pat in Maine During COVID
Epidemiology: The Science Behind Public Health
The Day the Village Stood Still: “The Reckoning”
Extra - Erik Bottcher receives FDNY Jacket
New York Spirit! FDNY Honors Erik Bottcher and Crew for Bringing Fortifying Meals During Pandemic Crisis
Artists Collaborate With Seniors in Quarantine Through New Program at Greenwich House
The Day the Village Stood Still: (Part 5) The Fog
The Neighborhood Network
To Shake or Not to Shake: The History and the Future of the Handshake
Employers Likely to Face a Wave of COVID-19 Class Action Litigation
Coast to Coast Coronavirus Caravan
Leading Through a Pandemic
The Day the Village Stood Still: The Moratorium and Booty Loot in the PPP
NIGHT LIGHT
New Yorkers Dazzle in Custom Masks
The Cohen’s Children’s Medical Center
Covid-19 and the Mental Health Crisis
Operation CoviDance: Mia’s Pandemic Mission
Relief During the Shutdown: Online Delivery Service
White Horse Tavern Struggles with Compliance
Experiencing Emotions During Covid-19
My Plague Doctor Mask Finally Came
You’re Not Alone. Not During Quarantine. Not During Pride.
The Virus
Teaching in the Time of Coronavirus
June Community Events from the West 13th Street Alliance
Life in a Plague Year—Life in the Time of COVID-19
A Call To Duty: Feeding Our Frontline Workers
The Bicycle Thief

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

January 2020

Subscribe Now

January 2020

Donate Now

Read the Archives

Sign up for WestView News EXTRA

Copyright © WestView News