‘Don’t stop having optimism’: combat vets on surviving the pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic at once slows and blurs time. Each day suspends us between monotony and uncertainty, rendering tomorrow almost identical to yesterday, and foiling our efforts to imagine much beyond the present.

For five months, and to varying degrees from state to state, most of us have lived inside a closed-loop routine that resembles shampoo instructions: wake up, shelter in place, repeat. Confronted by that daily sameness, Colleen Ryan-Hensley relies on coping skills she honed while deployed aboard Navy destroyers in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The way I maintained sanity was focusing on what I could control,” says Ms. Ryan-Hensley, who served in the Navy for 11 years and lives in Frisco, Texas. “I’ve tried to do the same during the pandemic, and that’s been helpful in keeping things in balance.”

The restrictions on civilian life, if as onerous for

Finding meaning in the momentReordering life prioritiesTreating hardship as an opportunityNurturing ambitionsDelivering hope