The Key

Today I am grateful for snow melt and an early spring rain to clean things up. I also appreciate my colleagues and their insights on difficult topics.

On my way home yesterday I heard the Eagles' song Already Gone. Read an early blog post about it here. I feel the favorite lines of this song more deeply today than I did in that post nearly nine years ago. "So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains, and we never even know we have the key."

And I felt those words differently yesterday, as we mark a year into the pandemic. A year since the rug was pulled out from under us. It was exactly a year ago in my part of the world that the seriousness of the situation and things like school and business closures were happening. 

What we have collectively and individually suffered has been much. My heart goes out to all who have lost loved ones to COVID-19. My deep gratitude goes out to health care workers and others who have done the toughest of the toughest duties. Tremendous thanks to those who first created the vaccines we now have available, and all those helping bring them to us.

And yet, the chains imposed by the pandemic have allowed us new insights and opportunities, have allowed us to slow down and look at life and our surroundings differently. Priorities shifted, first out of necessity, and now some out of choice. 

There have been tragic, terrible things in this last year. And yet we have been able to keep moving forward. There has been much evidence of the resilience of humans. Much love and care we have shared with one another. We have the keys to get through this, and we pick them up each day to unlock the day ahead. Onward!