Author’s note: This is the second in a series of articles on the perspective gained from the coronavirus, meditations from a generation’s first experience of sheltering in place.

In the 2015 Spielberg film “Bridge of Spies”, Tom Hanks, playing US attorney James Donovan, represents convicted KGB spy Rudolf Abel, who is on trial as a Russian spy during the Cold War. Abel is as peaceful as a South Georgia pond during the trial, so Tom Hanks looks over at him and says, “Do you ever worry?” Abel replies, with absolute conviction, “Would it help?”

Unbelievable. 

My Dad loves to quote this during times of crisis. He’s ex-air force (my Dad), and there’s something about military training that changes your perspective to focus only on things you can control.

(Boy, how many mental health situations could be remedied by this skill.)

Because troops have to survive in high-stress experiences. It’s life and death, and they require the skill of clarifying the dizzying inputs on their mind and simplifying the call to action. And the core of that training is focused around this concept of “Circle of Concern.”

Imagine you were to draw a circle on a piece of paper, and a smaller circle inside of it. Now, let’s label the larger one “Circle of Concern” and the smaller one “Circle of Influence.”

These concepts are used by Stephen Covey in his famous book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” (which is actually coming up on its 30th anniversary—still in top-10 lists worldwide, by the way).

Covey taps into the old adage that there are two ways to live: proactively and reactively. You can either take ownership of your life, or you can react to life as it happens to you. You can drive, or become the victim. There is rarely a middle ground.

The circle of concern is huge. It is growing with every step of technology, allowing us to know and care about everything under the sun, almost immediately, as it is happening. 

We are concerned about pandemics, shootings, germs, and a million other things all the time. 

Our circle of influence is not keeping up—it can’t. So even though we know about more and more, we can’t necessarily do anything more about it. 

That leaves a vacuum, a burden carried by our weary minds.

Where you circle of influence ends is greatly overestimated, I would imagine. (We tell ourselves weshould worry about things that are well outside the lines, that it is a moral obligation. But that is another conversation.

Take the coronavirus: a prime example.

The big circle is the coronavirus and the small circle is what you can actually control.

We can’t control the world’s fate and the world’s progress to safety, but we feel like we should, that we are obligated to form our own opinions and plans and timelines. 

But we can’t control any of that. We can’t even control our community, if we are honest. All we can control is ourselves and our small circles of influence.

For sure, some people have the power and position to include the coronavirus in their small circle of influence, but that’s not most of us.

What can we control?

If there is anything we can learn from this pandemic, it’s this.

We need a clearly defined circle of influence and action-steps that will lead us successfully through. We need a bootcamp to shape our souls and fill our veins with ice.

Because this is war. There’s no guarantee any of us make it out alive. 

Am I worried? I’m tempted. 

But tell me…would it help?

Read this on the VDT.