I'm not a fan of "everything happens for a reason." It's a statement that can make the afflicted feel deprived of their right to feel worried or wounded.
But I will say that the worst of times often offers us the opportunity to reclaim the best of ourselves.
It's like a kind of reset.
As we try to balance the advice to not panic with directives to maintain three-foot boundaries with other humans; work, educate, and worship from home; and, apparently, observe frugality with bath tissue, we certainly feel conflicted. To be charged with guidelines that seem so unnatural - and unsettling - teases us with the very fear we are being advised to deny.
Images and anecdotes on the news, though generally well-intended, sound a most shrill alarm. They churn the pit of dread in our bellies (or light our hair on fire), and those feelings are normal. Because these are not normal times.
But they are just the kind of to-the-brink times that kick us out of complacency and, honestly, make us really see one another again (ironically, when we are supposed to be seeing less and less of one another!).
We've already witnessed wonderful bits of this happening: educational outfits offering web-based resources and classes free of charge, local restaurants and stores integrating delivery or curbside pick-up, neighbors stocking food banks and blessing boxes, children making cards for senior living residents no longer permitted visitors. These may seem like small gestures, but they make a tangible, positive impact on individuals. Collectively, these efforts are life-changing and, perhaps more importantly, purpose-affirming.
To this end, KLH Group is responding to the pandemic pandemonium with LOVE and support.
With intention and action, we are thinking of others – mainly our clubhouse families – in these hours. Many are separated, with one parent staying at a child's hospital bedside while the other attends to children at home. Moreover, some parents are essential workers and must leave their kids home in their commitment to serve the public.
So we are reclaiming some of the control we've lost to the coronavirus, and harnessing our need to react not by hunkering and hoarding, but by assessing and addressing. Here are just a few ways our team will deploy to our clubhouse community:
Grocery delivery, either through instacart membership or personal drop-offs.
Donations of gift cards to local restaurants for carry-out.
Engaging more comprehensive strategies - from home service needs to educational resources and tutoring - where the gaps are greatest
For one or two of our hardest-hit clubhouse families, a monetary donation matched by partnering companies.
Of course, we are a extending a robust invitation to those in our network to join us in seeing this crisis through a different lens. We welcome existing and new partner companies to experience what giving at a uniquely uncertain, incalculable time does for their organizations, for their teams, and for the world.
It's our moment to reset. At KLH Group, we’ve truly never felt more conviction. Now is the time.