what do you think it’s going to be like, once it’s over? Will it ever be over? We’ve been living in suspended animation during the pandemic. Even if you’ve been going to work each day as one of the essential employees, things weren’t the same. Queueing outside shops, approaching people and places with caution, six feet (two metres) becomes the only measurement you can think of. Avoiding public transport (unless you are the driver), staying largely within the confines of our own neighbourhood.
While the global crisis played out on the news and in hospitals, for everyone at home the world got smaller, we became villagers again, downsizing our lives for the greater good. Lockdown has been about the things we miss. It wasn’t just postponed weddings, lost holidays and the like, but the silly things like in my case, being able to get up at six in the morning, drive to the gym and spend a few hours between working out on a circuit of the weights machines followed by a set round using free weights. Followed by a visit to the Spa and swimming pool interspersed by a timed visit to the steam room, sauna and finally a long relax in the jacuzzi. All of my time in the “Fitness Centre” as the owners call the gym, is spent in the company of close friends that I have made of the ten years of my membership. I can hear people reading the last paragraph and thinking ‘gym at 0630 in the morning yeah, I’d really miss that’. Well I did say it was a silly thing that I’d miss.
I’d also bet that there are a great many things during lockdown that you have loved missing. Things like an extra two or three hours commuting, added unpaid on to your working day. Spending your working day crowded into a room made up of cubicles because space is a premium. Worse still is hot desking, that’s too horrible to explain. …….. oh doesn’t working from home and not wasting hours commuting seem attractive and much too good to give up.
If we take anything away from this experience I believe it is going to be kindness. Once this life begins to have some semblance of order and normality, will we continue to look out for those that are vulnerable, keep contact with loved ones and treasure the small things. I was going to finish by saying that I hope so. Not true, life as we knew it will never come back and we are going to be changed for the better, forever!
