If there is one thing we’ve all experienced in the first half of 2020, it is change. Each one of us has been affected in drastic ways by recent events.
To me, the news that your life is changing always seems to come like a sudden bolt of lightning. It brightens the world around you in an instant, turning the most mundane of surroundings and the most routine activities into the backdrop for memories that will be etched into your consciousness forever.
Over the years, the biggest changes have struck me in what seems to be life’s routine moments: when I was putting on makeup or refilling a sweet tea. It has always come when I least expected it and summoned the most dumbfounded feelings of awe.
A few weeks ago I was putting on socks when I got a phone call that precipitated just such a change.
Backing up a bit, my family and I fulfilled a dream last February when we moved back to Hattiesburg. It was definitely a step-out-in-faith move for me – I didn’t have a job. I left an industry that I loved to be closer to eight tiny beings we refer to as the g’babies.
The plan was to open a business of my own, and then the pandemic put everything on hold.
So this phone call, coming seemingly out of the blue, changed everything. It seemed that there was an opportunity to return to my chosen profession, working for folks I’ve worked for before and greatly respect, in the city I love, for Signature Magazine and The PineBelt News.
If it wasn’t so big or so shocking, this change wouldn’t represent a defining point in my life. The older I get, the more I realize that life is change and how we deal with it plots our course. No one can predict the future, but we can control how we prepare for the unexpected.
This was a very welcome change for me, but the changes we’ve all experienced over the past few months haven’t all been so pleasant.
This is the “Happiness Issue” of Signature Magazine. It comes at a noteworthy juncture in our lives. We don’t know how the pandemic will play out, or what further changes we may experience, but we do know the best remedy for handling the unforeseen.
It is gratitude. It’s always gratitude. And the quickest way to experience gratitude is to dwell on the things that make us happy.
There truly is no need for retrospective regret when life challenges us. And no matter what change may take from us, gratitude is the answer. It is our hope that this issue serves to help us be glad for what we have and strive to make the most of it.
I am happy and grateful that I have the opportunity to make this exceptional community my home. I am happy and grateful that I get to work every day with a talented group of professionals. And I am happy and grateful for you, the reader, who allows us to keep on doing what we love.
I hope the stories we’ve built this issue around serve as a testament to happiness and a guide as we navigate this uncertain journey.
Best wishes, and talk to you again soon,
Christina Pierce, Publisher
