Mar 5

Mar 5 Be the cockroach

It’s been nearly a year since the before times. A year since we hugged friends with abandon, a year since we attended school or work in a typical setting and a year since we attended a live event. The list goes on and on. For the friends and family of over 500,000 individuals it will also begin the countdown to the one year anniversary since their loved one’s passing. Whether it’s someone or something, we are all grieving and the next few weeks could get a little sticky as we each face our own griefaversaries.

My blog post from a year ago was called, “The show must go on” and I wrote about Miguel’s return to Broadway as Hamilton, our many memories in the Richard Rodgers theater, and how life goes on even in the face of grief, “no matter how much I wish it would just pause so I could work through it all.” Ha! Be careful what you wish for… Jokes aside, even through ‘the great pause' life has continued on - albeit completely unrecognizably, but it has continued. We’ve all faced turmoil along the way, some much more than others - especially people of color and of lower income - but those that will come out with the fewest scratches are those that were willing AND able to adapt.

Throughout Adelaide's life medical professionals would often ask me about Adelaide’s baseline: meaning what was her health, behavior and ability like on a typical day. Unfortunately, her health and abilities were so erratic that it could be difficult to establish any formal baseline. In time questions about her baseline made me laugh but it took me a year to accept that we had no idea what each day would bring and that there was no reasonable option other than to just roll with it. We still fought for improvements, but we also accepted the challenges of the day. Plans were made, changed and circled back to like a football play designed by the Tasmanian Devil.

The truth is, regardless of precedent or circumstance, our lives and world can change in the blink of an eye. So how do we persevere and ultimately survive? To this, many people will insist that we should ‘live everyday as if it is our last’ but, I've gotta say, that is a whole lot of pressure to put on ourselves every single day. Just thinking of all the planning that entails has me reaching for my Xanax. This way of life is not sustainable, however, living with intent is. It’s also more flexible. Should we have goals and make plans? Absolutely! We just have to be sure that we’re open to changing them - to adapting. We are taught in school about evolution and ‘survival of the fittest’. Our society thinks of fittest as the strongest, smartest or healthiest, but that is not what Charles Darwin meant. In his own words he said:

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.”

Tyrannosaurus Rex, one of the strongest and most ferocious animals to roam the earth died out. There was an entire human species known as the Boksop’s that were likely more intelligent than our ancestors and yet they didn't survive. You know what did survive? Cockroaches because they can adapt to just about anything.

At the end of the day, health and intelligence are certainly helpful, but it is our adaptability that helps us survive. Be it on a cosmic scale or just in our day to day lives. We MUST be able to adapt to change, whether that means working/learning from home or abandoning your entire career because your husband is going to be Hamilton and your daughter was just diagnosed with epilepsy. Oh, sorry, was that last one just me? Regardless, you get the point. We are all a phone call or news report away from having our plans, dreams and lives flipped on their heads, what matters and what will determine our happiness, is how we respond to that change.

Life isn’t going to go back to the way it was before because before we had never lived through a global pandemic. We can't unlearn or forget an entire year of our lives. Those best positioned to survive and succeed long term will use the experiences of the past year to adapt. We will live with intent but be prepared that our intentions today may change tomorrow. That doesn’t mean we failed it just means we adapted. So as we adjust to yet another new normal in the coming months remember that it is not the strongest or the smartest among us that will thrive and succeed - it is the mother trucking cockroaches.