Searching for serenity in times of strife
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Just weeks after my husband and I moved to Canberra at the outset of 2020, I found myself sitting on the front doorstep of our new home, staring into a horizon shrouded in bushfire smoke.
Hot, tired and lonely, I tried to conjure up the customary sense of excitement of a new beginning. I prayed for the strength to survive what the year had in store. Little did I know that a world of strife was around the corner.
To be fair, 2020 had begun quite optimistically with our decision to move to the ACT. After many years of squeezing our everyday moments within a series of increasingly suffocating and overpriced Sydney apartments, we were hopeful that a change of scenery would offer us more green space, a sustainable and improved way of living and a daily commute to work that was under three hours.
Much to our relief, Canberra had quickly proven to live up to these expectations. But the choice to relocate had come at a cost. In our new city, we could count our community of friends on a total of three fingers—and while we deeply appreciated those three lifelines—it was a stark contrast to the extensive support network of our diverse family, combined with the lifelong friendships we had left behind.
In addition, soon after our arrival in the ACT at the tail-end of 2019, our plans were disrupted by two key events.
The first was the rather alarming fact that Canberra and its surrounding states of NSW and Victoria appeared to be on fire and gearing up for a protracted and devasting bushfire season.
The second was my father-in-law’s diagnosis with an aggressive brain tumour in New Zealand which predicted he only had a matter of weeks-months to live.
As a result of the latter, my husband resigned from his job and crossed the Tasman to assist in his father’s care. Approaching this decision as partners in life, we agreed he should remain in New Zealand for however long was required while I continued working in Australia. Given our status as a recently-relocated single income family, the option of us both going was just not feasible.
This being the state of play was how I came to find myself alone on the front doorstep, praying for life to be less complicated.
In response to my prayers, my new job working on the emergency response to the bushfires soon generated its own set of demands that required one’s full attention. Part blessing and part baptism of fire (no pun intended), the work proved laborious, time-sensitive and stressful. But the resilience demonstrated by frontline responders and specialists served to remind me of the extraordinary capacity of humans to survive and thrive under pressure.
Throughout the course of this work, I was fortunate to see the best of humanity reflected in the efforts to safeguard and protect flora and fauna, homes, businesses, crops, and critical infrastructure during one of the hardest and most tragic summers in Australian history. In an oddly familiar way, the experience reminded me of my years working in the Middle East responding to the Syrian refugee crisis—with most days equally divided by stories of devastation, resilience and hope.
Then, just when the bushfire season began to ease, COVID-19 reached Australian shores. A sense of impending doom swept over me as I was briefed on the estimated global impacts and infection rates as part of my work. It simultaneously terrified and motivated me to dive in with urgency.
Soon after, we were stuck by heartache on multiple fronts in the space of two months. First with the unexpected passing of our treasured family pet, followed by the passing of my incredible grandmother, the closure of national borders, the roll-out of lockdowns, and finally, the passing of my beloved father-in-law.
Unable to take extended bereavement leave, nor travel to New Zealand for my father-in-law’s funeral due to COVID-19 restrictions, my memory of this period is a blur of white noise underpinned by unending worry for the hurt in my significant other’s heart. This, combined with countless Zoom calls and restless nights of insomnia and anxiety about things beyond my control, is what pervades.
However, I imagine this is how a large percentage of the world spent their time at some point during 2020.
After a year that often felt like a real-time experiment in Murphy’s Law, it is also unsurprising that many of us have found it challenging to maintain a foothold on positive thinking.
This is likely because we feel cheated by the fact that 2020 failed to live up to our expectations and we fear that 2021 promises more of the same. But on a deeper level, many of us have also found it painful to lose opportunities in our professional and personal lives with the knowledge that our time is finite.
Physically separated from our support networks for extended stretches of time, we have grappled with feeling unmoored and uninspired by our circumstances. This, in turn, has given me pause for reflection as I search for a sense of calm in the new year.
Perhaps the paradigm of excelling in the face of adversity through strength and sacrifice is not the right fit for our world right now. In the alternative, perhaps we need to embrace the more accurate story of our lived experience. A story of survival as a means of growth which is more powerful than any of us may have initially realised.
Perhaps the real victory of our time is that it has taught us to relinquish the need to master everything. Instead, we have been reminded of how to exist and sustain our humanity in the unsuspecting and everyday challenging moments that come to define us. In the moments when our hearts are breaking, we feel defeated and our dreams feel distant and unachievable.
For me, this has become a story of hope.
Thirteenth-century Persian poet Rumi famously maintained that “the wound is the place where the Light enters you”. Holding onto this thought significantly helped me through the days, weeks and months of 2020: a period largely defined by personal illness and grief.
It has also sparked a deeper sense of personal transformation this year, a revolution of sorts, if you will. Most certainly, this is a byproduct of the world seeming to grow infinitely smaller, still and silent for a time. But for me, something beautifully unexpected has happened amidst the global and personal turmoil of our recent time: I have discovered what it truly means to surrender.
As a result, my experiences have led me to surrender my professional and private stresses, my ambitions and dreams, along with my burdens and grievances. I have surrendered my ideas of who and what I need to be and quietened the relentless mental chatter about societal norms and pressures. I have let go of my ideas about success and failure, love and loss. In fact, I have let go of it all in favour of just taking life as it comes and surviving on a real-time ability to learn, unlearn, relearn and repeat.
In doing so, I have finally found a sense of serenity amidst the strife.
Glimmers of hope have also appeared as a ripple effect of this mindset shift. While apart from loved ones this recent festive season due to continuing COVID-19 lockdowns, it compelled me to remember that life has equally contained great opportunity and joy in this time of uncertainty.
On a global level, humanity has worked together to make tangible progress on the road to recovery from COVID-19—developing vaccines and implementing numerous effective strategies to reduce infection rates and safeguard our most vulnerable.
On a local level, it has been a booming year of babies, with my sister, plus several close friends among those giving birth to healthy newborns—bringing new life, possibility and meaning into the universe.
And on a spiritual level, my husband and I gratefully celebrated the simple luxury of being in the same country for our first wedding anniversary—grounding us both in a newfound appreciation of what truly matters most.
Laying side by side in bed that evening, I recall mouthing a silent ‘thank you’ to the universe as my husband’s warm hand found mine in the darkness, knowing it was the greatest gift I could have hoped for in a time when so many, have lost so much.
So perhaps the formula for finding a sense of peace amidst the chaos is not as complicated as it often seems. Possibly, it is as simple as anchoring our hearts and minds to what we hold most precious, focusing on what inspires us and surrendering the rest.
Undoubtedly, we all have this ability inside us. However, its criticality often goes unnoticed, until the world grows quiet, our senses grow heightened and we come to realise we have been holding our breath.
May 2021 be a year in which we give ourselves permission to exhale.
A Canberra Sunset. Credit: Alex Wright-Moore.
