How does one go mad? Let me count the ways: 2.5 year old + 1-bedroom apartment + 2 working parents + 12 more months (if we’re lucky) of quarantine life. Yet despite the odds, we are closing in on September 2020 as bruised but whole survivors. Anything that comes at or for us in a post-COVID world will pale in comparison to what we will have mastered during this time.
I have often wondered how those who lived through the world wars kept going in the face of atrocity and deprivation. COVID-19 unwittingly presented me with the ultimate inkling of the herculean efforts necessary to keep putting one foot in front of the other. We are all fighting a hard battle – a different one from those of our ancestors – and yet, I can at times view this fork in the road as fortuitous, for it is demanding that all of us to answer the big questions in our lives and call forth what we truly wish to build
We are all fighting a hard battle
Let’s reflect on that for a moment, because even as those words spill forth, I know the urge to compare is there. And 2020 is forcing us to wrestle with a difficult feeling – whether in fact all hard battles are equal. On this point, I have come to the conclusion that the answer is no. Let’s take systemic racism. By not being white and not being black or hispanic, I am already both lucky and unlucky in America. I have noticed that recently in the New York Times and elsewhere, discussions of race simply ignore Asians. Statistics are presented and polls are conducted that predominantly break down representation based on White, Latinx, or Black categories. The upside? It is a reflection of the fact that Asians don’t die in the same magnitude that other minorities do. We are safe because of our invisibility. The downside? For the first time, I have a feeling that we don’t register anywhere, ghosts left to walk among the living. We are passed over in careers, under-represented in politics, absent from the media (Crazy Rich Asians aside). We peak early – school being the last and earliest life stage in which we are recognized.
In thinking of 2020, I continue to fight three battles and only narrowly won one (Kim v. AmEx Platinum v. Air Canada – a post for another day). I was passed over a second time for a promotion, I continue to support local and small businesses almost daily in their fight to survive, and I advocate for best practices that our daycare should implement in order to keep our kids and the center safe from COVID-19. It’s a lot of fronts to be manning on top of a full-time job, nurturing a toddler, and keeping the house in a manageable state which is to say, simply keeping vermin away.
I recognize how privileged I am to be fighting these specific types of battles. That I even hold an American Express Platinum card already tells you something perhaps uncomfortable about me, though I hope it won’t drive you away. My family lived at the poverty line from the ages of 16-23 – I have not arrived at this stage in my life unscathed. Therein lies the truth of the matter – our battles may not be equal, and yet to each of us individuals, they are still hard. We are still required to put in work which may come easier to others but does not necessarily come easy to the person who bears the brunt of the effort.
Life gives you what you can handle
Time and again, we are called upon to rise to a challenge. These days, the ask is to envision a future that reflects what you believe in and to work towards making that vision a reality. This fork in the road is hard but also, a hard reset that we need to lean into. People poo-poo astrology, but if anyone can believe in luck, then the concept of waiting for the right time shouldn’t be hard to grasp. Leveraging a waiting period to foster the best conditions for success is where the most and best amount of living is achieved.
Buoyant Bloomer is my fork in the road, the beginnings of a journey that I hope to be on 5, 10, 15 years from now. Our educational system is broken, just as so many other systems in America are. I cannot fix them all, but I can tackle one issue. I choose to think deeply about how to raise a good son while reaching my goal of financial independence as a modern working parent and becoming a more engaged citizen in my own network and community. This project is not revolutionary for there are those whose full-time job it is to homeschool, but my goal is to show that it is possible to be present in our children’s individual development while doing what is essential in our careers.
COVID-19 is forcing us to educate our children and work at the same time. We can be repulsed by the impossibility of the situation, or we can sharpen our observational faculties to pinpoint what practices we want to continue when a vaccine exists and the traditional school system is back on its feet. The educational system will not pivot for our children. But we as parents, even working parents, can pivot in how we accompany our children on their learning journeys so that they become the people we want to be surrounded by in our old age.
