The Pandemic Showed Me The Value In Living An “Inconvenient” Life—Here’s Why

A year of life in a pandemic has taught us many things—like how loud our partner speaks on conference calls or how much of our wardrobe is meant for impressing strangers we no longer see. Perhaps the most ubiquitous and confronting of these lessons was the importance of putting down our own convenience in order to prioritize the health of our neighbors.

As days simplified into essential and nonessential activities, it became clear how much meaning “inconvenient” tasks can have on our lives. It may be inconvenient to make dinner at home versus going out to eat, for instance, but it creates space for families to connect over cooking lessons, dinner-table conversation, and shared dish duty. Similarly, it is certainly inconvenient to wear masks everywhere in public, but doing so creates a shared sense of duty and protects those in our communities who are most at risk.

Putting down our daily conveniences in favor of the greater good has also helped focus our attention on the things the word inconvenient is woefully ill-equipped to describe—like the senseless murder of so many Americans at the hands of our police or the single mothers who had to choose between keeping their job or caring for their child during COVID.

As things begin to return to a new normal, it is important to carry this lesson into the future as we tackle the most inconvenient crisis of our time: climate change. The good news is there are many reasons normalizing inconvenience can improve the health of not only our planet but ourselves.