Re-entry. The word I dreaded as the buzz heard immunity and vaccination became familiar. My excitement to move through the world more normally and not fear my loved ones becoming ill was haulted by the fear of going back into my office. An office that I had only worked in for a few weeks before the world haulted and an office I knew I did not want to go back to ever again. After 8 months in solitude with my fiance, I began to feel whole again after years of going through the motions. Wake up, shower, coffee, commute, talk to my coworkers about thier children I would never meet, listen to people suggest podcasts I would never listen to, stand around the water cooler talking abour recipes I would never make and worse that all of it, sit in boardrooms where my opinions were never valued.

I had finally begun to feel whole again and I shuttered at the thought of re-entering a space that took that away from me. I knew my peaceful cup of joe on the back porch would turn into a travel mug that would be left in my center console. I knew that my walk at lunch would turn into a granola bar hanging out of my mouth while I responded to emails. I knew that my focus would quickly be distracted by stories about my boss's sisters wedding or worse, small talk about the weather. My productivity and my personal time for self-care, organization, and recreation were to be taken away at 8:00 a.m. sharp on August 21, 2021 and all I could do was greive the inevitable loss of a peice of myself.

My first day back, I was in the office alone and yet I panicked. I feared the tranmission of the disease that I had watched nearly kill my mother and father on separate occaisons, but I also feared that my peace would never be restored. For a year, I worked ten-hour days, went through the motions, had the small talk, the pizza parties, the awkward hallway hellos and finally in October was able to find a remote position where once again I could begin to feel whole.

Morality is something that we learn from the time we can conceptualize good and bad until we are no longer of sound mind. We don't know if it is right or wrong until we, ourselves, decide it is - yet novels, lectures, religions, communities and relationships are formed from the values of where the line between good and bad stands. Humans are in constant turmoil, driven by emotions. Our inherent needs, brain chemistry, and cells are constantly subconcously telling us what we need, while our morality and values, work hard to steer the course of our actions and behaviors. I met my now husband not knowing that our values would so deeply align. Our compassion for others and for animals, our need to apologize when we have hurt someones feelings or overstepped a boundary, our desire to fix things that are broken so that others can benefit from them are a moral obligation that we have not only to allow us to forgive ourselves but to make the human experience more tolerable for others around us. It was this core human value that aligned that brought us together when we are so different otherwise. Adversely without morality, people move through live satiating their needs without regard for others. While it can be seen as self-serving or mean-spirited, we as humans often simply do the wrong thing because of a lapse in judgement, allowing our emotions to overtake our values, or simply being complacent in our morailty. Who we are as people, our values, our morality drives people's impression of us, the people and energy we attract, and the peace we have within ourselves. Morality exists on a spectrum that can only be defined by the individual, yet our belief systems, governments, religions, families and communities are formed off of lineages of people deciding what is good and bad.