Focus On The Goal, Not on The Coronavirus

You may have heard or read that you should “focus on the goal, not the obstacle” when dealing with problems, or even when writing. I have written a post or two about it myself. I am the kind of person who sees every problem, major or minor, between me and where I want to be, and magnifies them until they seem insurmountable.

I was reminding myself of this yesterday, of how important it is for me to focus on my goals if I ever want to accomplish anything else in my life, when it occurred to me that COVID-19 is an obstacle.

COVID-19 is an obstacle that we are blowing out of proportion.

Now,I don’t mean it’s no dangerous, or it not deadly. It is all of those things and where public health practices are concerned,I still don’t think we are taking it seriously enough. I still see people walking around like it’s 2019, like God Himself told them the virus doesn’t target special people like them. I mean we have blown the coronavirus out of proportion. We have allowed it to take our eyes off our goals.

I see people throwing in the towel months in advance of the advent of their worst fears and just accepting their fate, the loss of their jobs, the end of the economy, the end of any kind of normalcy, the complete and unchangeable alteration of every facet of their lives, never to be experienced again. I can’t count on both hands the number of people who have told me they expect another shut down by the end of October and who have stopped planning, dreaming, or thinking of anything beyond then. Whatever they had planned for then, or even after then, is not going to happen. And, it probably never will. That is they was they act, the way they talk about the future, as if COVID-19 has taken the country away from them.

COVID-19 smacked us a good one and knocked millions and maybe billions of plans and goals in the dirt and nothing, no amount of preparation, money, positive thinking, or personal strength was enough to stop it. Dream jobs and business, ideal lives and futures – gone, destroyed by something we need a microscope to see and may never completely defeat.

For us, some of us, maybe most of us, it has become the focus of our attention. How may infected? How many dead? Where are the new hot spots? On my job, every new rumor of an infected student or professor increases the fear, increases the murmuring, and increases the dire predictions of early closure, and even of the complete failure of the university. And, COVID-19 grows in stature.

I am guilty of this, too. I have put a few things on hold, like looking for a new job, like working out a time table for my goals, until after “all this has clearer up”. And, who knows how long that will be?

We will still be living with the effects, side effects, ripples, and consequences of COVID-19 in 2021, 2022, and beyond.

But, we shouldn’t take our eyes off the goal.

We shouldn’t stop hoping. We shouldn’t stop dreaming. We shouldn’t stop living.