Everything’s gonna be alright

The voice on the other end of the call became garbled and faded out. I saw the senior executive’s face on the Microsoft Teams call, but I couldn’t make out what he said. When he came back on, all I could hear him saying was “what do you think, Brian?”

In this crazy COVID-19 world, I feel like I’m always one step behind. I get half the information and need to piece together the rest of the puzzle. Oh, I feel lucky to still be working, to have a job, to have money coming into our house. I feel even more fortunate that my family is healthy. I’ve heard too many stories from friends and acquaintances about sick relatives. Some have even passed away because of the virus. So yes, I feel very fortunate, but I still naturally worry about everything nowadays.

When I finally closed my laptop for the day about an hour later, I heard my my wife and son going back and forth in our living room. I stormed down the steps, and, of course, made the situation worse by jumping in with my two cents.

I needed to get back to a good place, so I decided to go for a run. Since COVID-19 first hit the U.S. with a large force,  I’ve been a slug. I start the day with good intentions to exercise and get in my 10 to 12,000 steps, but I get caught up by work or the temptation to watch Netflix and the day gets away from me.

No time like the present to change that pattern. In addition, I figured that the exercise would clear my head. As soon as I started out on my run, though, I wanted to stop. I wanted to head back home, dive into bed and throw my blanket up over my head. Oh so tempting. I was just about ready to quit and turn around when I clicked forward on the next song on my smartphone. The song “Everything’s gonna be alright” by David Lee Murphy and Kenny Chesney came blaring through my headphones.

Murphy starts off the song singing about a guy who’s been getting kicked from behind. A woman points to a sign on the wall that gives him a few words of advice:

Everything’s gonna be alright,
Everything’s gonna be alright,
Nobody’s gotta worry ’bout nothing,
Don’t go hitting that panic button,
It ain’t near as bad as you think,
Everything’s gonna be alright,
Alright, alright.

As much as I wanted to stop, I kept going, one foot after another, then another, and another. It’s just a song, a simple chorus, but five minutes turned into ten, ten turned into twenty, twenty turned into forty and I got my run in.

I have no way of knowing what the future holds and I don’t want to give the song too much credit, because it hurt more than I would ever like to admit. (Tell me again why I stopped running in the first place and let all the hard work I had built up go to waste.) However, I’m hoping my little run is a metaphor to help us get through these challenging times.

Sometimes you have look beyond. You have to simply push through the pain and frustration and worry, and have a little trust, faith and hope that better days are on the horizon.

A little faith that, yes, everything’s gonna be alright.