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What Isolation Can Teach You
Just because Covid-19 has you stuck at home doesn’t mean you can’t find some joy every day
Remember Cast Away? The box office success where Tom Hanks’ character spends four years shipwrecked on a deserted island. Yes, that one. I recently gave the film a rewatch via a rabbit hole of YouTube videos. As I watched the clips, reviews, and trailer, I kept thinking one thing:
I would’ve just given up.
There would be no finale scene of me reuniting with the ex-who-left-me-because-they-thought-I-died. There would be no me-diving-into-the-ocean-to-rescue-a-volleyball-named-Wilson.
I’m a Black woman who can’t swim or build a fire. Enough said.
It’s been 20 years since that movie made its debut and although it’s not likely that I’ll be isolated on an island for four years, the truth is, many of us find ourselves in unique chapters of loneliness. According to a 2018 survey from The Economist and the Kaiser Family Foundation, 22% of adults say they always or often feel lonely, lack companionship, or feel left out or isolated. Since the outbreak of Covid-19—which Hanks himself has contracted—much of the world has instituted self-imposed isolation and social distancing to keep from spreading the virus and many of us are feeling the same feelings of loneliness and FOMO.
Before the pandemic, I experienced my own bouts of loneliness and isolation. But I didn’t give up during my real-life loneliness, and while you’re in your own period of isolation, neither should you. If you’re open to it, isolation can teach you a few things (and I’m not talking about how to make rafts out of videotape).
You can use this chapter of isolation to become a better, stronger (hopefully healthier) version of you.
A deeper connection to God
My real-life version of isolation came in the form of a new job in a new city. When I first moved to the Midwest, a region that felt strange and foreign to me, I spent a lot of time trying to make my apartment into a home. That included buying my first Big Girl Bed. You know, the type that won’t creak or cause you back pains. To cut…
