How many times did you already hear someone say, “After this whole thing, we’ll go back to where we used to be.”
But is that entirely true?
I don’t know for you or what you believe in. As for me, I’ll be changed forever by all the things that went through my life. Like how the 2008 economic crisis changed those who went through it, this COVID-19 pandemic sure did change the ways I conduct work and the manner I think about sources of income.
And why is that?
Here’s a good thought about resilience, bouncing back, and moving forward:
We’ve become accustomed in recent years to the language of resilience, and to the idea that after a massive interruption we revert to the norm. We bounce back, return to our former lives, become ourselves again. All those expressions imply that after a big life disturbance, we eventually go back to the person we were before. That kind of linear rebound does happen in some cases. But far more frequently, we actually move in new directions. Instead of going back to what we were before, we go sideways, forward, or some unforeseen place entirely. Shape-shifting, in other words, is nonlinear, just like every other aspect of the nonlinear life.
jessa 