You’re in a war. You don’t have to be remarkable right now.

Last week, I read an article encouraging people to use the coronavirus quarantines to achieve something “remarkable” with their lives.

This may be possible, but for most people I know, conditions for being remarkable are — to put it mildly — suboptimal.

Granted, there are a small number of crisis ninjas who could learn calligraphy in a POW camp or attain that beach body while homeschooling the kids. But for the rest of us, now is absolutely the wrong time to take on unreasonably ambitious goals. When you’re trying to hang onto a job, file for unemployment, and arrange care for an elderly parent — all while bathing only occasionally — you are already operating at a very high level.

As I touch base with friends from around the world I am deeply concerned by the severe levels of stress accumulating over these months. It feels to me like the world is ready to explode.

In my own life, I am witnessing two major family rifts. There is no doubt why this is happening now. Everyone is at the end of their rope. Like an earthquake that’s been slowly building under the earth’s crust, we cannot take one more stressor. The terrible power of that accumulated pressure must be unleashed at some point.