“Together we can, and we will, overcome this, and thrive once again.”
Yet Sorenson didn’t sugar coat the situation. Marriott have had to temporarily close hotels and lay off thousands of valued employees. Sorenson did what all exceptional leaders do in times of crisis and peril—he confronted the brutal reality of the situation while steadfastly maintaining faith in ultimately triumphing over it.
As my husband lays in a coronavirus isolation ward tonight, cut off from visitors and still battling a fever that has left him utterly devoid of the energy he usually exudes in spades, I hold on to that same optimism.
Yes, these are dark times. The darkest of times. Yes, people are suffering, people are dying, people are wondering how they will feed their families, pay their bills and keep their businesses afloat. Their fears go well beyond actually contracting this virus. We are all wrestling with our fears right now. All working to keep them in check, safeguard our families and navigate a future mired with uncertainty.
Yet I know that we human beings have an enormous capacity for life. We expand it when we dig deep, trust in ourselves, and reach out to support those around us. Not just those in our immediate ‘tribe’, but the most vulnerable among us whom we wouldn’t ordinarily consider being part of it.
Because yet again, these are no ordinary times.
As I wrote in this previous column following my evacuation from Australia’s bushfires in January (yes, it’s been quite the year—and it’s only March!), life’s storms introduce us to ourselves in ways that calm waters never do. It’s in the moments when our spirit’s are tested the most that we can discover within ourselves reserves of courage, compassion, resilience and ingenuity that may otherwise have lain dormant.
Next week I was due to embark on a speaking tour across the U.S. Instead, I will be facing a very different sort of week, holed up in my apartment, my husband with COVID-19 (hopefully having turned the corner by then, hopefully me not having contracted it), and my children all physically distancing themselves from others.
As I trust you will be also.
This is not the way any of us wanted to be spending this time. Schools closed. Vacations canceled. Businesses closed. Our lives shuttered up. Yet it is in turbulent times like this, when our fear runs high, that the need for courage runs higher.
So acknowledge the fear you are feeling. It is real. And it is valid. But don’t let that fear overtake your thinking.
Rather choose to show up right now with the courage you want to instill in others. Show up right now with the generosity and compassion you wished you’d seen more of in recent times. Show up right now as someone others can lean into, and lean on, for assurance, for connection, for friendship, or for laughter over a virtual glass of wine.
Right now you have to be braver than you want to be. But in looking within yourself for the certainty you cannot find elsewhere you will, like me, discover new realms of strength you may never otherwise have come to know.
“Let me not squander the hour of my pain,” wrote Rainer Maria Rilke. Let us instead use our hour of pain to connect to our shared vulnerability, to own the fragility of our humanity, and to use the gifts that have been given to us—our talents, our time, our money, our creativity, our relationships, our social platforms, our courage—to weather this dark stormy time better and to emerge from it better off.
We owe that to ourselves. We owe that to each other. We owe that to our children who are missing out on the experiences we want for them and they want for themselves.
Whatever your creed, or even if you don’t have one, take a moment right now to lean into faith that within every adversity, to quote Napoleon Hill, “lies the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” Then feel the ground beneath your feet from which the seeds of new beginnings and brighter days will grow.
We all share that same earth. We must all do our part to nurture seeds for brighter days.
So breath in faith, breath out fear.
Breath in faith again.
As Abraham Lincoln said to Congress in the dark hours of 1862, “The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise—with the occasion.”
Let us lift each other up and rise to this occasion.
Our future is depending on it.
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Margie Warrell is the author of You’ve Got This! The Life-Changing Power of Trusting Yourself. Listen to the COVID-19 Special Edition of her Live Brave Podcast here.
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This post originally appeared at MargieWarrell.com, published with permission.
