“Misery loves company.”
“It is what it is.”
“This too shall pass.”
“Take it a day at a time.”
“The sun will come up tomorrow.”
My English teacher in high school called sentences like that colloquial language. I learned that meant ordinary, expected, or very commonly spoken phrases. For the last few weeks people in a daze are speaking trite and expected sentences. They are using language that reflects the often dulled senses that accompany horrific seasons such as this. These are painful days no doubt and this isn’t a quick message about watching our vocabulary.
There’s a reason people know these phrases and speak these statements. Read them over again.
The reason they are said so often is that they are soaked in truth. We do feel better knowing we aren’t the only ones navigating these unknown waters. When a worldwide crisis like this happens, people realize they can’t change the circumstances that encapsulate them. It helps to know it’s a season and that the next season won’t just be hotter, but more hopeful. Keeping a short account, checking in on friends and loved ones, making sure you are breathing – these are the things that are best done in quicker and more regular time intervals.
How do I know this to be true?
The new day that comes after today always comes. It may be rainy, it may be windy, but the fresh start that the dawn brings means new opportunities await us. Every day a new day comes.
Sure, it feels like the world will never be the same. And like post 9/11 and other significant events, things will change. True as that may be, we will also find a pattern, a routine, a regular pace to life again. Baseballs will be pitched and hit. Movies will be released. New sitcoms will be produced. Another type of automobile will be invented. Handheld mobile phones will get bigger and smaller and be able to do more. Babies will be born. People will fall in love and some will get married. Life will return to normal. Not a new normal, but a normal-normal.
You’ve heard it before – the sun’ll come up tomorrow. It rings true – because it is.
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