Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.
― Rumi
I keep wondering what we can learn from this pandemic on a meaningful level. I think that I have grown in empathy for the patients we instruct to social distance (before that was a term) now that we understand the loneliness and loss of freedom that can represent. And I think I have grown in my need to understand the vulnerable even more, as we have all become vulnerable. I am ready to see the new roots grow into a new joy.