May you have patience in dark times.

I look out the window at the cobbled, cloudy streets of my hometown. It is a dark April in Addis Ababa, gloomy and grey, and it felt like that in my heart too.

We don’t know how long our quarantine will continue. We despair when we are fighting an unseen enemy.

When hard time punches you in the face, it feels like a black hole is opening up beneath you and you will fall right through.

Living in hell cripples us. It calls us with a sneering voice. Come I will swallow you and diminish your existence.

It takes days – many, many days — before something inside of me clicks. Jumping into the dark hole and giving up is unhealthy. It is painful as hell to keep going. No one is better equipped at taking care of you . And looking out for you and loving you than you.

Please, please you have to keep going.

Even after this awareness, even after this plea of me from me, even then, well.

How tempting to give up. To surrender to the hell you go through.

What this means is that the more you feel like falling through the dark hole, the more you need to keep going.

I learned to be strong and survive hard times bit by bit. At first, it felt like something gnawed at me. Like I needed the hard times to spare me. Have mercy on me. Take me out of this dark hole.

I realized the more I felt desperate for someone to save me from my struggles, the bigger and more powerful my hell became.

The only way to survive is to keep going.

We can’t beat the coronavirus through the force of will. But through patience.

We stay home to protect our loved ones. We are patient while doctors develop first an antibody test, so we know who is immune, and then a vaccine, so we can actually eliminate it.

This takes time, and this will take patience.

This dark time feels like it is forever and that there will never be light. But the fact is everything is temporary and as such, as permanent as this feels, you will outlast it.

Keep going.

When I focus on my day-to-day life in the middle of a lockdown in Addis Ababa, the pattern of living in a long, dark day feels familiar. It feels like I’m confronting an old enemy.

Here we go again.

“I’m going tto survive this dark time. I’ve got this. ” I tell myself as I wake up in the morning and thank God I’m still breathing.

I organize my new work life. Write. Have online video meetings. Give online classes. Answer emails.

This new routine felt like a piece of cake for the first week of quarantine. I had patience in abundance. Now, the fourth week of quarantine, patience abandons me stranding me in my own home.

I want the dark time to have mercy on us. I want to get the hell out of my home. I miss my students. I miss going out to restaurants. I miss human interaction.

“When will this end? ” I wonder.

Then I focus on the here and now. Patience walks in tiny strides when I focus on the present moment. I walk inside my living room so I can breathe and move. Breathe and move. Even the strongest will is rendered powerless if you can’t breathe.

Do your best to break your day ininto tiny chunks and just focus on the piece in front of you.

Focus on something you can do, no matter how small. Talk to a friend on the phone. Cook your favourite food. Rearrange the flowers in your home. Water your plants and take out their weeds. Hold a special cup in your hands and gaze at the outside through your window. Look at the gorgeous, blue sky.

Never underestimate the power of simple things. They feed your patience.

We do not know when light will take over the dark time. And probably when we think we’re done and we lose our patience, that’s when we’ll be called on.

One more time, be patient.

“When you’re goingthrough hell, keep going. ” — Winston Churchill