The Paradox of Pandemic and Hitting “The Wall”

“I think I hit it’” my client told me. It was just a few days ago, and he had been self-isolating since mid-March. Up until the last couple of days, he was feeling pretty good about things. Sure, he was waiting for “when things get back to normal,” but he had stocked up, was following social distancing, passing time being as productive as possible.

But he hit it — The Wall. When we talked, he was still in his bathrobe, had managed to scroll his social feeds, refresh his emails repeatedly, and eat leftover pizza… followed by stale doughnuts. That was, he told me, the extent of his day. Those Zoom meetings? He was AWOL. Those phone calls? Uncalled. In fact, I had called him because he didn’t call for our coaching session.

I think we all hit it at some point (or multiple points!) during this pandemic. Most people will pull themselves up and over The Wall and keep on going. You know when you hit it, though. It’s when you feel like giving up (as if that is an option), find yourself dragging through the day, and feel a bit (or a lot) hopeless. The seemingly never-ending Ground Hog Day of pandemic living has hit. The Wall.

Do you remember all of this at the beginning? When we thought — really, it was just hoping — that this would be short-lived. I do. Looking back, I see the mind game I was playing. I was refusing to really stare this in the face and see it for what it was: a long-term game. Both of my adult children left larger metropolitan areas to isolate with us. Their areas were looking at a spike in coronavirus infections, and our area looked like it would be less hard-hit. So, they packed and came home. We thought it might be for a couple of weeks… maybe even a month, God forbid! That was eight weeks ago. And there isn’t really a clear end in sight.

Sure, I knew we would have pandemic issues for months. I knew it. But I didn’t process it or think about it. And when I saw the estimates that we could be well into 18 months of this before there is a vaccination that could shift us toward any real normalcy… it hit me (or I hit The Wall), and I began to stare down the consequences.

Life, between here and there, was going to be radically different. For me, you, and everyone. We don’t get to escape this because of geography or wealth. That said, where we live and what resources we have shapes how this impacts each of us. The threat is there. The individual impact, though, will be different.

For many, we hit The Wall (or it hits us) when we realize yet one (or many) more implication of this pandemic. The one that tips you. What we can or can’t safely do. How we will have to shift our daily lives and habits. When we will safe to travel and visit. All those parts of life that we barely thought about before — we do now. Now, they are unsafe or complicated (and usually, both).

Even the optimists hit The Wall. In fact, they may be the ones that hit The Wall the hardest. I had a conversation with a self-professed pessimist several weeks ago. He told me that he had long feared this was coming. Honestly, he seemed somewhat elated that his worst fears had finally shown up. At the very beginning, he had played out every possible implication and scenario. He was almost upbeat in his pessimism.

Pessimists have the advantage at the moment. There is plenty of news to support them. But why the struggle for optimists? It’s a paradox.

In fact, it is the Stockdale Paradox. Named after Admiral James Stockdale, who survived seven brutal years as a POW in Vietnam. In Good to Great, Jim Collins describes this important paradox of surviving difficult times. It came from a conversation with Stockdale.

How did Stockdale make it through the brutality and difficult times during his imprisonment? When we hear the story, we know the end of the story. But as Stockdale was going through it, he didn’t know how it would end. This is much like our current situation with the pandemic.

Collins noted his interview with Stockdale, “‘I never lost faith in the end of the story,’ he said, when I asked him. ‘I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.’” Stockdale never doubted that he would prevail.

Collins went on to ask about who didn’t make it out. Stockdale had a surprising response:

“The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”

Another long pause, and more walking. Then he turned to me and said, “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

Over the past months, I have seen the Stockdale Paradox in action. Have you? Proclamations that the pandemic will end in a few weeks (I held that hope at the beginning), that it will end by May, or by summer. Soon, that will stretch to “by Fall,” “by the Holidays,” and onward. But when dates hit without resolution, optimism can falter.

More importantly, when we are holding out for some date of resolution, we are also waiting for life to just resume. For us to just go back to our old “everyday life.” We aren’t facing the implications of what we are facing, the “brutal reality,” as Stockdale puts it.

Then, as those implications and complications emerge, they throw us for a loop. We run straight into The Wall.

Will there be a day when things are back to “normal”? Yes, but not the normal we were living in 2019… or even in January. Most research shows that we are not done with this virus (and this virus is certainly not done with us) this year. It will remain a threat at least until some level of immunity emerges (whether through vaccination or “herd immunity”).

We hit The Wall when another implication or complication of this virus hits us. One more shift in life, one more inconvenience, one more struggle. One more piece of life disrupted by a microscopic piece of RNA.

We must be confident of the outcome, that we will get through this. We will come out the other side. That is something we can hold onto, even embrace. But there will be some brutal truths of what that means as we move forward. The economy may not simply go back to where it was. Many activities will not simply resume. Habits we never thought about until they were disrupted, will still be disrupted. Wearing masks may just be a new normal for self- and other-protection.

Still, we will get through this. We will adapt and grow. But not if we keep just waiting for “normal” to return. Not if we believe this is a cultural “induced coma” that will just end; that we have entered into a suspended animation, and once we “re-open” we go back to where we were.

We won’t. That is the brutal reality that Stockdale recommends we face. Not facing reality does nothing to change reality, but it sure stops us from adjusting and moving forward. As far as I can tell in my life, every time I push against reality, I lose. Reality wins. Every time.

But there is another part to Stockdale’s story. While imprisoned and tortured (a situation far beyond our current reality from this virus), Stockdale built a community of the prisoners. He knew that relationships are what get us through any struggle and crisis. He knew that getting out of a crisis comes from relying on others in that same crisis, and them relying on us.

Clearly, we are not all viewing this crisis from the same perspective. Nor are we suffering in the same ways. Still, we are all in this together. There is no other choice. This pandemic is, indeed, global. We are all allies in the crisis against this pandemic.

I was talking with a client yesterday who noted that he had been through several personal crises. They only affected him. The rest of the world was going on with their lives, even unaware of his struggle. It was a very personal experience. And he felt alone.

This pandemic is different. We all are facing it. It is a worldwide crisis affecting the entire population. While the specific effects of the pandemic vary from person to person, broadly speaking, we are all affected.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I had hopes that we would pull together, heal the fractures in culture, and step forward as humanity. I still have hope that we will make that shift. At the same time, clearly there are deep fault lines serving to separate us. The common enemy of the virus can serve to join us together or cause us to focus only on self-preservation.

Which reminds me of Stockdale, the focus of the paradox. Under duress and torture, Stockdale saw he was in it, but in it together. He was a POW, but he was a prisoner with all the other prisoners. He focused on helping everyone through their imprisonment. Stockdale refused any advantage offered to him by his captors. Instead, he focused on teaching his fellow prisoners to communicate with each other. He devised a protocol for dealing with torture. Stockdale worked to make it through his ordeal, while helping others make it through. He faced his (and their) reality. And he chose a path through.

When do you hit “The Wall”? I find that for myself, it happens when yet another piece of life is affected. Or more accurately, when I realize that another piece of life has been affected — that life has been changed.

I notice that there are two points getting me past The Wall:

1. Accepting reality. Whenever something is lost or changed, we feel grief. When we look at reality, accept it, and step into a new reality, we adjust. If I keep trying to figure out a way back to the old reality, I keep struggling. It’s gone. Which raised the question of how to accept reality… and then make the best of it. That’s the human spirit that has allowed humans to adjust to change since the beginning.

2. Connecting with others. Since the pandemic is a crisis for all humanity, we are all in it together. We can forget that fact and isolate, feeling like the suffering is only our own. That is the time to reach out. Others are feeling it, too. Perhaps we would be better served with feeling it together. We need support and we need to support. That is the way through any crisis. It’s just that in this crisis, we are all in the crisis. Together.

We must hold onto the belief that we will make it through this pandemic. We will get to the other side. But if we don’t face the harsh reality of that, we will not adjust or adapt. And we will not do it together. That is the paradox of the pandemic.

The Wall is the dawning realization of our pandemic-affected life. It can be a tough moment. Yet as humans have shown since the dawn of our species, we find a way through. By going through, improvising, improving, moving, and focusing on where we want to be. Facing the brutal reality feels like The Wall. But it is really the starting point of getting there. To our life.