What is love in a pandemic? Belabored distance. Profound longing wrapped in terror. Hopefulness to contrast even the bleakest landscape. It is finding common ground with the people you deemed alien. It is working towards a common good. The most likely catalyst for the unity our dreamers have dreamt. One underlying thread woven in the fabric of our lifetime that equalizes us. We’re all locked away, caged birds nipping at eager fingers. We’re all scared and we’re all being held back. Finding different ways to catapult ourselves forward without the obvious avenues. It’s ingenuity. It’s the deliberate and profound picking apart of a life that once suited us. Heavy and encumbering with accoutrements we acquired through years of constant motion. It is an all stop that allows us to move forward far more intentionally.

But the world didn’t achieve what we deemed necessary. It didn’t rise to the call that summoned us all to do our human parts. The world is a divided place. It has started to dwell in the dark spaces where logic and compassion cannot thrive. It has us pointing fingers and throwing tantrums. If love in the time of Corona has taught us anything, it is heartbreak. It is an unrequited love. That we can pour our essence into something that we know to be a source of truth and it can run off and be dammed by fickle little things that clog our world. Our love little less than water down a drain.

If love in a pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that tenacity is required in all things. Even the most surefire things can come around on you. Nothing is as known as we think. But it shouldn’t stop us from pouring our sweet considerations into the world. It’s never worse off from more love in its system. It shouldn’t stop us from showing up, from doing our best. And perhaps most importantly, it has shown us how valuable it is to love ourselves and how quickly ourselves are all we have left. When you’re locked away with only you, it becomes imminently important that you should like that person. This is love in the time of Corona. It is fickle and barbed. It is fleeting and gut wrenching. It is all at once worthwhile and futile. And we will keep doling our sweet love out anyway.