Amanda Lamb: Big decisions

The best example of this was when my oldest daughter was a baby and she contracted meningitis. After a lengthy hospital stay, she came home, where she stayed isolated for weeks due to her lack of immune system. At the time, I decided it was probably best to quit my job and just stay home with her. My mother strongly counseled me not to do this—that having a child almost die was a crisis like no other, one that would take time to process. She was right—after taking a few weeks of leave, I found good care for my daughter and returned to work.

The same holds true for when my mother was dying and I was caring for her in my home. My inclination was to stop everything in my life and just be with her 24/7. She was having none of this. She urged me to work part-time and also spend time with my family.

“This will eventually be over—but your family and your career will go on. You can’t ignore them because of the current crisis,” she told me.

So, I think this is good advice for right now. On one hand, the pandemic has given people time and space to evaluate what they really want out of life when it comes to relationships and jobs. That’s a good thing. But on the other hand, making major life decisions right now that you might regret later is not a good course of action. Everyone is restless, I get it, but decisions made based on the current status of the world may look very different in six months.

What I keep telling my family is that we can’t plan anything right now. That everything is up in the air. We don’t know what the world is going to look like in 2021. What we can do is focus on what we have right in front of us—our loved ones, our work, and do the best we can right now in the present moment. Because what I do know is that with every crisis comes the other side, and we will all eventually get there. I know that for sure.