Hope, Loss, and Everything In Between
Where were you 4 years ago? A photo memory on my iPhone popped up, nudging me to revisit a moment from that strange era. It’s June 12th, 2020, at 12:08 p.m. At that time, I should have been wearing a clean-pressed shirt, eating lunch in a steel-and-glass high-rise miles away. Instead, I was covered in sweat, mid-run in the rolling hills behind my house.
That photo took me back to the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, a time filled with a new kind of anxiety and stress. And yet, as I look at it now, I’m reminded of something else. Stripped of my well-worn routines, structure, and expectations, I distinctly remember feeling a sense of lightness. Optimism. Alongside the worry that mishandling the packaging on my Frosted Mini Wheats might somehow make me or my family deathly ill, there was also this strange, refreshing uncertainty. Like maybe, if we made it through this, anything was possible.
I don’t say this to diminish what was ultimately a long and difficult time. But it feels worth bookmarking that fleeting moment, a time when despite everything, I felt a fragile kind of hopefulness.
I honestly didn’t plan to write about Covid-19. For so long, it was the only thing anyone talked about and analyzed, so much so that now it feels like we’re collectively trying to avoid acknowledging it altogether. But how do we assess how we feel and move through life today without at least acknowledging the impact of those years? There’s this disconnect and tension, between the date on the calendar and how I feel emotionally and physically. Maybe you feel it too?
When I look back at this timeline that feels both paused and stolen, I realize how much has shifted without my permission. Time seemed to stretch and shrink all at once, leaving me disoriented but also strangely reflective. The goals I once thought were so urgent now feel distant. Meanwhile, quieter, unassuming moments—the ones I might have ignored—have grown in significance. Even my relationships, both with others and with myself, carry the marks of this strange, in-between time.
As I reflected on these shifts, I realized that one space where time felt different was outdoors, where my relationship to the natural world changed.
I’ve always enjoyed being outdoors, but as life and a career continued to unfold, it became more of a scheduled activity. While I still greatly appreciated it, there was an intentionality, and sense of urgency imposed by me on the experience. I was always looking for something, expecting to get something out of it.
“This is the hour I have after work and dinner to step outside of my cautious, scheduled life and embrace the beautiful chaos of the natural world so that I can feel better.”
During Covid-19, when many of us were working from home (or rarely leaving it) and plans didn’t exist, I spent more time outdoors and in an unscripted way. Early in the morning before I signed into work. Mid-morning walks, runs at lunch, and often again in the evening, sometimes hours after I would have ordinarily been in bed. I hiked the forested trails and the narrow pathways through the tall, wild grass behind my home. I watched flowers spring from the earth, unfold, and cheer me with their beautiful colours, only to slowly diminish and return to the ground. For what felt like the first time in decades, I really felt aware of the seasons, the length of the days, and the position of the sun in the sky. Not as an afterthought, or a moment noticed in passing on the commute home, but as something more grounded in the present.
I vividly recall one morning, stepping outside and witnessing the moisture in the ground evaporating—rising like breath from the earth. I’d lived here for nearly a decade, yet I’d never seen this beautiful transition at dawn before, as if the ground was releasing the night’s lingering heaviness into the warming air. And I realized, it wasn’t because it had never happened, but because pre-Covid, the likelihood of me noticing was almost zero. I was far away in an office tower long before the sun even rose.
Something so simple, so ordinary, was also breathtakingly beautiful, right there behind my home. It made me wonder how much else I had been missing in the rush of daily life. We’ve been conditioned to think we need to travel thousands of miles to have our perspective shifted, to feel awed, or to see our lives differently. But what if that sense of wonder is available right here, if only we’re truly present? Not just physically showing up in the over-scheduled pockets of time we usually allow ourselves, but being here, with enough stillness to notice the extraordinary in the everyday.
Without me imposing this burden of expectation, being outdoors became restorative in a way I hadn’t anticipated. Emotionally and physically, I felt a sense of renewal, like I was reconnecting with a part of myself I wasn’t even aware I’d lost. Was there something in your own life during that time—a routine, or some fleeting moment—that brought you a sense of renewal or connection? Something you didn’t expect to lose, but now find yourself missing.
At some point, we decided—or were told—that this chapter in our lives, the pandemic was over. In hindsight, I feel that as protracted as the experience was, its ending felt abrupt and unsatisfying. The lives, habits, and routines we were so desperate to return to now feel different and more challenging. You might feel it too, in the growing financial strain of simply existing, or in observing the fraying edges of a society that seems to be unraveling under the weight of it all. Like the pandemic revealed and widened the cracks that already existed—in our systems and in our own lives.
I feel like we’ve continually been trying to time travel back to February 2020, before Covid-19 upended everything. But it doesn’t work, because we’re carrying with us the knowledge of what came after. All of this emotional weight of loss, uncertainty, and change. Returning to our old lives hasn’t been the clean break we imagined. The structures we clung to for comfort now feel oddly ill-fitting, as if life moved on without us, or we outgrew parts of it in ways we didn’t realize.
I’ve felt this dissonance acutely, like trying to slip into a role I no longer recognize. Returning to my daily trips to the office, which once felt like a comforting routine, now feels almost unnatural, as though the rhythm of that life now feels foreign, like it was always meant for someone else. And I suspect I’m not alone. I think many of us have found that the comfort we once longed for feels hollow and more appealing in memory than in practice. The world moved on, and so did we, even if we didn’t mean to.
Perhaps it’s worth remembering those fleeting moments of lightness. The ones that felt like a pause, a breath, amid the weight of it all. When the structures of our days fell away, we found ourselves exposed to something unexpected—the beauty of what was already here.
The world may feel heavier now, more complicated, but maybe that’s why it’s so important to hold onto those moments. To seek them out, not on faraway trips or carefully planned days off but in the quiet, unscheduled spaces of our lives. To notice the breath rising from the earth after a cool night, the familiar rhythm of laughter with friends, or the simple joy of time shared with someone we love.
If we can carry anything forward, maybe it’s this: a reminder that even amid uncertainty, there is still beauty, still lightness, waiting to be noticed.
If this essay spoke to you, share it—or drop me a note. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
