“Embrace the Suck.” This is something a friend of mine recently said to me. It’s his motto whenever things get tough. He learned this in the military and it helped him through very difficult times. The idea behind it is to find your level of comfortability when a situation is extremely uncomfortable and hard to endure. With the current atmosphere that the world is experiencing, all of us are living outside of our comfort zone and are having issues adjusting to this new sense of normalcy. The fact that we have lost so many to this disease is a travesty and that is not to be taken lightly. Families and friends are distraught by the deaths of those they loved and are even denied the ability to mourn properly. For those of us who are quarantined, would we prefer to talk to our friends and family face to face rather than did it via Facetime or Zoom? Don’t we long to hug those from whom we have been separated? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to walk back into our places of business, engage in conversations with our co-workers and feel a strong sense of accomplishment for the job we are paid to do? Absolutely! But, unfortunately, this is not the current state of affairs and for many of us this “sucks.” But let us think about how this can be embraced. From tragedy comes appreciation for what still remains a reminder of the beauty and happiness it brings. Many of us are spending more time with our children and close loved ones. We are getting home projects done that have been otherwise classified as something that will be done “one of these days.” We have had time to read, contact those we have not spoken to in quite a while, go for walks, ride our bicycles and even appreciate sitting outside and taking in the beauty of the world around us. There was a reason that our lives have been put on hold. What that reason is may not be explained to us, but regardless, we need to appreciate the rare gift we have been given. This too shall pass, and humankind will be stronger and wiser because of it.