Emily Esfahani Smith

I've become a parent.

That was a major life transition for me.

But the pandemic, the political atmosphere, things have changed.

And I think that in these moments of transition, what can happen is our sense of self gets shaken up a bit.

And definitely, whatever happiness we may have been feeling, whatever comforts that we had,

may not be in place as much as they were before.

I remember seeing a statistic during the pandemic saying that Americans were the unhappiest that they've been in decades.

And of course, all those indicators of suffering that I talked about a moment ago, they had been rising.

But during the pandemic, that rise became even steeper.

And so transitions don't feel good all the time.

but they can be these opportunities to reflect, to kind of pause, kind of like the way the new year is, to pause and think about, okay, what do I really want?

What do I value?

And I saw a lot of people doing that during the pandemic.

They were kind of foisted into this situation, not by choice, and they took it as an opportunity to kind of reflect a little bit more deeply on their lives and what they wanted.

And they came out of the pandemic

with a new sense of direction.

So I think with transitions, we have to recognize that it's totally normal for them to feel bad and for us to feel unmoored, both in terms of our happiness and our meaning because things are changing.

And yet, if we kind of continue the search, use that time, as uncomfortable as it may be, as an opportunity to reflect on what we want, where we want our lives to go, what our purpose is,

it can lead to these opportunities, these new directions in our lives that can feel really, you know, life affirming once we come out of it.

I think, you know, for every person,