Breaking out of Eggs

Submitted by Dr. Rachel Sturdivant, MUSC College of Medicine

“I am Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine in Nephrology with an interest in Adult Development Theory, Leadership and Coaching. I am married, also have 5 teen girls, and my experience with COVID is significantly influenced by that personal facet of my life.’

‘In June 2020, the cases of COVID 19 were dropping just a little bit, although unbeknownst to all of us, they were about to rise significantly in the coming weeks. I was making tiny, hesitant ventures out of my tight, safe zone that I had created with masks, tight control of my family's social life and even staying home to provide telemedicine visits. My interests outside of medicine veer towards adult development theory in the context of coaching, wisdom literature and the search for meaning, significance and enlightenment. I had seen a post on Facebook about eggs and had to do a little research to understand the identity of Abraxus. Suddenly, I was writing about the egg being a metaphor for our developmental state, and how we make sense of our reality and our ability to accept it fully. In reading what is called wisdom literature, there is a concept that everything encountered, felt, and experienced belongs in our reality, and acceptance is the way through. I found myself struggling and grappling and searching for any positive learning to come from the pandemic, even if it might not be realized until later in our lives. Humans tend to become so focused on immediate threats and discomfort that we cannot see at times how we are being liberated, much like the new life emerging from the egg. I doubt that any of us yet feel completely liberated from COVID, or if it will provide that experience at all. It was an opportunity to reframe a terrible, confining and immensely frightening time in our lives. COVID 19 has caused many of us to fallback in our developmental journeys as we look for safety, security and certainty of some kind, even if it is all an illusion, and there is a space just outside of the egg, if we are brave enough to break through.’

'Diary Entry June 19, 2020: COVID and the Egg'

'...As the world deals with the advent of COVID19, every individual is feeling for the wall of their egg. Except all of the eggs are different as are the lives within them. Some egg shells are thick, some are fragile, some almost translucent. There are eggs of different colors, some with spots, some with damage. There are eggs that have been abandoned, left for dead and those tenderly cared for. Some have left their egg, and haven’t realized that the wall of the next egg is just further out.

The metaphor of the egg is synchronous with development. A perceived threat such as COVID19 causes each of us to shrink inside the egg in which we live. We feel for the wall, feel it under our feet, our safety and security, what we know. COVID19 challenges us by breaking the egg against our will, when we are not yet ready for it to be broken.

In the world of coaching and adult development theory, the best coaches are invited to tap on your egg. Maybe shine a light through the egg wall, gently letting you know there is a world outside of your egg, should you choose to see it. However, by no means is one supposed to crack the egg wall as one cannot know if that will prematurely launch the life outside of the shell not quite ready for the world that it enters. The vulnerability, the nakedness, the lack of fully developed resources resulting from an egg cracked too soon may create trauma for the life inside.

COVID 19 has no such sensibilities. COVID19 is a virus, not a sentient being, at least not in the manner in which we would typically describe. it has no care or concern or even disdain for the wall of our eggs. It cracks them indiscriminately like many other natural disasters to which we do not ascribe personal blame. The scope and reach of COVID19 is just so much further and immediate than other systemic disruptions of our worlds, or at least as we currently perceive. COVID19 disrupts our infrastructure by sickening workers, tasks our production systems for masks and toilet papers and remarkably elevates business for pool companies and high end handmade wooden jigsaw puzzles. The news would have you believe that there are only negative aspects to COVID (and there are) including illness, death, isolation, distance between humans, fear, flailing economies, bankruptcy and destitution and loss. There are positive sides to COVID19 including a reduction in pollution, less use of oil and gas, more time with families at home, a curriculum on what to do when bored and a reorganization and understanding of our global interdependence even if one does not want to see it...'"