My Daughters Learned Lessons During The Covid-19 Shutdown That Will Serve Them Well Into Adulthood
One thing I learned from my parents while growing up in Mississippi was the power of resilience, grit and determination. Those lessons were put to good use in 2020.
(We returned from skiing in 2020 to learn that COVID-19 had upended everyone's lives.)
We were in New Mexico a year ago, watching the events unfold nationally as the Coronavirus roiled the country and, indeed, the world. (Candidly, I was oblivious to it all: I don’t watch, listen to or read the news, and I had a horrible sinus infection that kept me incapacitated when I wasn’t skiing.)
I vividly remember returning home, beginning to unpack and then hearing the now- infamous, and apparently ubiquitous, words from my wife:
You’d better get some paper towel and toilet paper.
Over the next 4 1/2 hours I visited 27 stores in seven—yes, seven—nearby cities, only to come away with a four-pack of toilet paper meant for use with RVs. Thanks, Coronavirus.
Within a few short days, we would know just how disrupted our worlds would be, with large companies sending tens of millions of workers home to work remotely and cities issuing Declaration’s of Disaster, imposing strict regulations on the size of gatherings, limiting the service offerings of restaurants, and temporarily closed down others, including bars, lounges, gyms, private clubs, and churches. And most of the nation’s schools moved to online-only.
It was a surreal experience. Against this backdrop, I immediately began having conversations with my daughters, making them aware that we would get through this tough time together. At various points over the next several months, I shared the points listed below, though not in this order.
1. School is table stakes. There is no schoolwork you’ll miss from not attending school that will matter in 10 years. School is table stakes: You need to do well to keep doors open for future success. But the biggest and most important things you’ll take away from school are the relationships: the teacher who opens your mind to a new subject or the students you’ll call lifelong friends. That’s what matters.
2. Lives and livelihoods matter. This is a tough time for our community and our country. But we’re not going to focus on how our portfolios when people are dying. Even if we lose everything tomorrow, we’ll find a way to survive and thrive. Now is the time to make sure people don’t lose their lives unnecessarily.
3. Reach out to friends, teachers, and acquaintances. While schoolwork is important, what really matters during times like this is being a friend. Call, text, email, Facetime—or whatever your preferred method is—your friends, teachers, and loved ones to see how they are doing or to share a funny story. They need to hear from you; you need that as well.
4. Learn every day. Instead of worrying about what you might be missing out on by not being in school, focus on reading, writing, learning.
5. Gain perspective. During my senior year in high school, my senior class lost six students to horrific car accidents; two of the students were decapitated when their truck hit a tree that had fallen into the road. What made that incident even more tragic was that the tree that fell into the road was chopped down by two other seniors whose best friend had fallen asleep, drove off the road, and hit the tree, dying on impact. (There were only 100 people in my entire graduating class. Even more tragically, the guy who graduated two spots to the left of me shot his sister in the head with a shotgun after he returned home from a hunting trip and accidentally pulled the trigger as he flung the gun over his shoulder. )
You know what? It was a year unlike any graduating class ever at my school. It was so bad, you were allowed to come and go as you pleased, with no tardies or absences counted. Even on graduation day, it was other-worldly to think about what we had to go through. The lesson: No matter how bad you have it, or think you have it, consider the person who could be having a worse day, month, year. For example, my classmate will forever live with the knowledge that he accidentally killed his sister.
6. You have grit, determination, resolve. Use it. A quote that got me through college was “Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.” Character, grit, determination are formed during the tumult. Harness this to make you better, stronger.
7. Pray to God, but row for shore: The experience of COVID-19 during 2020 probably won’t be the worst thing that’ll ever happen in your life. But even if it is, learn to pray for the blessings you do have and enjoy. Through prayer, you’ll gain strength and clarity of how to benefit yourself and those around you.
8. Be compassionate and empathetic, always. Don’t wait for something to happen to you for you to realize you need others. One of the things that ground me and your mom is we don’t have to endure pain to see or feel others’ pain. We’ve lived through not having the things people take for granted. We appreciate what we have, but we don’t worship it.
9. Enjoy your time together. Yes, it’s tough living and working and doing schoolwork in one place, with everyone together 24/7. Find the enjoyment in the situation, especially since we’ll likely never have this much time together again during the school year.
10. Shut out the noise. Find what feeds you and run after it. Online is noisy and often not constructive. Single out the handful of activities that feed your mind, body, and spirit, and that sustain the fires of those passions.
They heeded my advice, which led to one of the most productive periods of their young lives. My youngest committed herself to volleyball, exercising, and coding. She also developed an uncontrollable drive and a level of maturity that we were all amazed by. My oldest daughter really found herself in 2020. She poured her energy into reading, writing, and watching movies. Additionally, she wrote several short film scripts and found a surprising potential career path.