Epic Quest progress report: Today is day 7. Total word count: 2,567.

May you live in interesting times.

I’ve always heard this described as an ancient Chinese curse.

The facts that it probably didn’t come from China and it probably isn’t ancient don’t take away from the truth of the message. And right now, it feels like a curse.

Because right now a lot of us are wishing we could have our normal, uninteresting lives back. Lives punctuated with concerts and movies and kids’ events. Lives where we could go to the grocery and the auto shop without wondering who might be sick near us. Lives where we could have dinner with our friends and eat and drink too much and not worry about whether our mask and gloves will protect us, or our friends, or anybody. Lives without social distancing, or Zoom meetings, when we could drive over to a friend’s house and sit with them and have a drink and give them a hug without worrying whether one or the other of us is infected with something that might kill us.

But what was inconceivable a few weeks ago is normal now. And what we thought of as normal before is gone, and whatever normal looks like when we get through these trials won’t look like the normal we left behind in February.

Interesting times, indeed.

So what does courage look like in interesting times?

Strangely enough, courage still looks a lot like it did before, I think. Fewer opportunities for the kind of face-to-face teeth-clenched don’t-back-down kind of courage we write books about, but still plenty for the kind of get-out-of-bed-and-try-to-make-sense-of-life courage we all have a chance to show every day. Plenty of opportunities to show our kids how to face the unknown, to share what we have with each other, to care about people and let them know when we’re thinking of them. Plenty of opportunities to learn new stuff, maybe do those things we always said we would if we just had the time.

There’s nothing easy about living in a global pandemic. Hell, there’s not much easy about life in general.

But every one of us has a choice, every day:

Am I going to let my fear make me less today? Or am I going to keep moving forward in spite of my fear?

What’s your choice? What will you do with your interesting times?