Write the End Right

June 11, 2020

Earlier this week, my friend's son was having one of those tough COVID quarantine days: Nothing was happy in his world, and he gave his parents trouble all day long. Then, around 4:30, he participated in a Zoom coaching session with his karate instructor, and shortly afterward emerged from his room transformed. "He came downstairs and apologized for the way he'd been all day," said Steve. "That lesson worked like magic. I even wrote to Sensei Matt to tell him about it. It was great to end the day on such a positive note."

If you've been reading my column for the last couple of decades (some of you have! thanks!), you'll have realized that one of my themes is what it means to be the author of the story arcs in one's life, whether you're a kid or an adult. These arcs can be tiny stories, like a single frustrating day in the life of an 8-year-old, or long ones like high school and careers and pandemics. The ending of each story arc is crucial, because it becomes the lens through which you look back at the story once all that's left is the memory. You have the opportunity to help shape that lens for each story you're living as you come to grips with what you can control, and what you can't.

This pandemic is not going to be marked by a quick satisfying ending like the bow at the end of a karate lesson, even if we pretend that it will. We want it to end. We've done a pretty good job flattening the curve for so long... our kids have been so unnaturally confined and have had to adapt to a weird non-school education environment... and, for pity's sake, it's summer. We deserve it to end. But it's not done, yet. This end-game is going to be a long haul as well, as hard as that is to accept.

I want the ending of this story to be "...and-then-in-June-we-all-burst-back-into-the-world-and-lived-happily-ever-after-THE-END." But wishing doesn't make it so. Fortunately, there are things we are able to do as we carefully phase our way back into our communities, even if there are many things we can't, and KidsOutAndAbout.com is doing its best to reconnect you with your community as smartly as possible. And remember, even though not everything is in our control, each of us can make sure our family's story of how we coped with the ending will be as deliberately crafted as how we coped with the beginning and the middle. Hang in there!