(Text & images featured in Team Epiphany Times, Experiences in the Pandemic, 2021)

What do we say yes to? What do we say no to? How do we extend this thinking beyond this trying time?

I outlined a  criteria to make sense of it all.

By Benson Wink
Photos by Benson Wink 
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It’s 2021 and I’ve stumbled upon Tim Ferriss’ How to Say No. For those unfamiliar, it’s a guide on how to enhance your life by contemplating the decisions you’re faced with on a daily basis. It encourages a brief pause-and-ponder to determine if the experience lives up to a certain standard: What's unique about it? Who am I experiencing this moment with? Am I joyous in anticipation? What's the trade-off?

Before 2020, these decisions arose much more rapidly. We’d be thrown into them headlong.  

Consider the ALMIGHTY question: “What are your plans this weekend?” This boiled up anxiety–what are my choices? What am I feeling? And for people pleasers, choosing to say no is not, at first glance, an enticing option. Instead of inspiring a sense of freedom, it transmutes into FOMO. 

After putting “saying no” into practice, however, I began to see its positive effect. 

Hope the below tangent helps! 

Let’s level set. The privilege of a pre-2020 world was that our experiences concerned themselves with our own internal desires. It was semi individualistic. We’d stack up experiences that benefited us in some capacity. 

Today, the decision around experiences is largely considered in relation to risk, to ourselves, and others. 

As the year 2020 took hold, these social choices, these decisions we were faced with regarding our life experiences, shifted. 

Now, my decision making revolves heavily around the tug and pull between risk vs. reward and individual vs. community—yes to that, but definitely no to that.  

I began to think of experiences within these dichotomies. What is a valuable experience now? What does it look like with the world in lockdown? What does it look like for you… me … us?

Through the lens of my own opinion on what a valuable experience may be, three factors emerged.

1. What’s the reward, individually (Does saying no grant a freedom, or fomo)? 
2. What’s the risk, individually, communally?
3. Does the experience inspire others nevertheless, to connect with nature or people? 

These experiences then landed on a scale, from 1-10. 10 being a great experience. 

While this process of thinking is not foolproof—and even a little  ridiculous!—as I journaled as many of my experiences through this lens over the course of 2020 and 2021 and I began to see which experiences stood as valuable or enriching. 

I’ll spare you and not share the large list of all my pandemic experiences (truthfully, there weren’t many) but after much consideration, I boiled down some key experiences.