What happens when you find that you have become unmoored from your “normal” life? How do you assess and cope with a situation that requires you to abruptly rewrite the framework of what you do, possibly even of who you are?

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I’ve asked many friends and family members in the past weeks a somewhat novel question:

“What is the best thing that happened to you during this crisis?”

I know, that’s an odd, even somewhat tone-deaf question for the times we are in. I know most of us, myself included, can easily run off a list of things that are terrifying, that we wish were different, and that we are struggling with. I firmly believe, regardless of how bad it may get, no situation is 100% negative. In every piece of heartbreak or horror, there will be that which is beneficial to our sense of self. I’m willing to bet, even for those under the worst conditions and the worst strain dealing with the crisis, there are glimmers of positivity and light in unexpected places.

The crux of the question is this: what makes us who we are? What makes us who we are as individuals? As doctors and CEO’s and grocery workers and fashionistas? As Americans? As part of humanity? Is it the ability to perform certain identifiable and specific functions? To go out to eat at the best restaurants and be seen in perfect outfits and live a life that on its surface enviable to the rest of our peers? Is it the job we have (and perhaps lost), or the social circles we maintain? Or, is it something else…something a bit more fluid than any of those labels?

If I’ve learned one thing in the past few years, it is that I’m wrong. Often.

For myself, an unwelcome and somewhat unexpected outcome of the economic collapse and personal isolation has been the fact that for the first time in my life, I have had no choice but to really sit back, “patiently”, and assess who I am and where in the heck I’m going.

I know, if you read this blog, you’ve heard me say many times before that I’ve been working on doing exactly that for a long time, and even that I had finally figured it all out. Well, friends, if I’ve learned one thing in the past few years, it is that I’m wrong. Often. If you’ve known me very long at all, you’re probably wondering who the heck is even writing those words. Yes, friends, I’m wrong. Its ok, its part of being a human, and its part of being me I am learning to accept. I’ve stopped having an overactive ego about it, even when I’m wrong about myself.

I’m in the midst of more of the same, except for the first time, there’s very little I can do to just go act on what I “find” about myself. Which means I am forced to spend the time I would normally use acting on my conclusions assessing the inner truth of those findings, rather than testing them out in the outside world as a working hypothesis. Its an interesting, if somewhat esoteric distinction. It is also probably the most positive thing that has happened in my life since the crisis started. There are other good things, like finding new ways to connect with friends, spending truly uninterrupted time with Mr. Wonderful (a blessing and a curse, but one that we haven’t had in over a decade). It all bleeds back into this process of awakening and self discovery. What an unexpected boon in times of uncertainty and sorrow.

Finding Positivity in Unwelcome Circumstances

Maybe one of my biggest personal weaknesses is my impatience and desire to rush to and through every finish line as quickly as possible. I want tangible results. I want them now. I want the recognition that tangible results generate from other parties.

Sitting in quarantine has shed some light for me on the fact that I’ve still been trying to find the easy, flashy solution to my future.

I have always paired this drive and impatience with a fortunate natural ability to find the core of any problem, quickly assess solutions, and then leap at them and execute. This is not necessarily the worst combination of traits, and has vaulted me forward and helped me achieve success in many aspects of my life. It is also most certainly responsible for getting me into some very bad situations.

As much as I’ve spent the last year trying to give myself the grace to move forward gradually and authentically from one of those bad situations of my own making, sitting in quarantine has shed some light for me on the fact that I’ve still been trying to find the easy, flashy solution to my future. As many of my business opportunities and networking events just effectively evaporated when we began the lockdown, I’ve had more time and more reason to analyze, again, who I am and who I’d truly like to be when I “grow up”. The conclusion I’ve effectively navigated toward, is that I guess I don’t really know. Even more important, as long as I maintain the things I like about myself and my life moving forward, I am perfectly ok with not knowing or having a finish line to race toward.

The N.E.R.D. Effect

Nothing is Ever Really Done. You can spend all the time and resources you like trying to complete a project, even yourself. There’s always ways to change or improve it that you will encounter long past the time you think you should be complete. This is as true of blog posts, outfits, meals, etc as it is of the journey to find yourself and be yourself and live your life. I’m not the first person to talk about the N.E.R.D. effect, and I probably won’t be the last. And that’s also perfectly ok.

Rather than trying to find definitive “solutions” to problems, what I’m going to endeavor to find in my future is next steps. Ways to move forward. To create positivity and build upon it, even if I don’t know exactly where I’m going. I think, from this place of forced self-assessment and reflection and time to examine the “me”ness behind my conclusions, that this is actually what makes me who I am. I am a creative visionary, a finder of problems and their solutions. Trying to do that on both a micro scale as well as a larger personal scale isn’t viable in the long run, however. Understanding that I can use some of these ways of thinking to attack one small problem at a time just might be enough for me to keep living my life and enjoying each step on the staircase.

WHAT MAKES YOU you?

The question cuts to the core of who we are, the things that make us special in this universe. The converse of the question raises another kind of philosophical dilemma: If a person isn’t themself, who are they?

Countless philosophers have taken a swing at this elusive piñata. In the 17th century, John Locke pinned selfhood on memory, using recollections as the thread connecting a person’s past with their present. That holds some intuitive appeal: Memory, after all, is how most of us register our continued existence. But memory is unreliable. Writing in the 1970s, renowned philosopher Derek Parfit recast Locke’s idea to argue that personhood emerges from a more complex view of psychological connectedness across time. He suggested that a host of mental phenomena—memories, intentions, beliefs, and so on—forge chains that bind us to our past selves. A person today has many of the same psychological states as that person a day ago. Yesterday’s human enjoys similar overlap with an individual of two days prior. Each memory or belief is a chain that stretches back through time, holding a person together in the face of inevitable flux.

Perhaps the truest thing about being who you are is having the courage to look at your life, and know you don’t have the answers to everything.

Even in the face of personal, physical, social, and emotional upheaval, we are connected to our pasts, therefore to ourselves. Even when our futures are uncertain, even when we are forced to become someone new, as long as we build on that background, we remain who we are.

What is the difference between intuition and the drive to succeed? Does the construct we create for our lives supersede the way we feel about creating it?

How do you know what is right and authentic to you? How do you choose one path over another? What is the set of circumstances or factors that make a decision the “right” decision?

My first “love” was the wild outdoors, followed by books, followed by music, followed by fashion, followed by the need to understand and control, to some extent, consumer behavior, followed by an obsession with ordered, easily-solvable mathematical problems, followed yet again by books and words and writing. Is it necessary to drop a pin in one pursuit, and use it as a definition of myself? Is any one of these passions more true to who I am than another, or is it the journey through all of them that is the most me thing about me?

One thing I do know, is that I’ve learned to be ok with seeking out the questions, rolling them around, understanding why I am asking them, looking at them from several different angles. The answers exist. Solutions to most of what I perceive as “problems” in my life are undoubtedly out there to find. Tangible solutions are not, however, the answer. Perhaps the truest thing about being who you are is having the courage to look at your life, and know you don’t have the answers to everything.

What makes you you, is a desire to understand yourself. Your “you”ness is not dependent on one specific label or title. Its not a state of permanence, it is a state of being true to what is necessary for yourself over time. Its interesting to me that, even in the long process and deep desire I’ve held to try to find the answers to all my questions, its this moment of stillness and isolation that has given me the courage to truly face some of the underlying and most indelible truths about myself. Incredibly, embracing uncertainty feels more “me” than ever. So wherever I go from here, I know it will be the right place.

Perhaps there’s something to this that our communities and our world ought to embrace as well. Whatever we come back to after the quarantine, it won’t be “normal”. We have already changed, and probably can’t go back even if we want to. That does not have to mean that we aren’t ourselves as a society. Hopefully what it means is that we embody an evolution, a period of growth and of retaining our humanity through what trials we inevitably encounter.

XOXO,