Traveling
Taking time to think and ‘be’.
I'll be taking next week off from my weekly blog to travel with my kids. Hard to believe I get to use the word 'travel' for the first time in 18 months. So much of what was 'normal' life has been upended during the pandemic. I don't know about you, but I have found myself double-booked the last few weeks - since I'm not used to having anything on my calendar at all. Preparing for a trip, which I can typically do blindfolded in a few minutes, seems to be a monumental task. The first tentative gathering with vaccinated friends has been wonderful - hugs, and real, deep conversations that last for hours, instead of the usual hour or two of catch up, gotta go, schedule is crazy, nice to see you, let's do it again soon. Work seems to be accelerating, as if we all have to do 'more' and 'faster' even though it's still over Zoom. To make up for lost time? To prove we accomplished something? Because that's what we've always done?
We all get to choose how we move forward.
Do you want a return to 'normal life'? Do you want to reflect on how you have changed? What will you do differently? How are you different? We are living in a period of enormous personal and global uncertainty, and like it or not, we will all be changed.
The pandemic isn't over, and it won't be for the foreseeable future. The 1918 pandemic lasted 1-2 years, coming in waves. We don't know about how the variants will work. How booster shots will work. How many booster shots? How quickly and widely the vaccine can be distributed globally. We don't know how the politics and power will shuffle, morph, grow and shrink, transfer or hunker down. This period of cataclysmic change is far from over.
You know I'm all about social change, and action is definitely my default mode, but this feels like one of those 'once in a lifetime' moments where stepping back and thinking about how we fit into the equation, how we want our lives to unfold, how we want to grow as a person (or not grow), reassess or reaffirm our values. And so, for a week, at least, I can't think of anything beyond seeing the ocean, the forest, and greedily breathing fresh air in nature. I just want to 'be'. I just want to 'be' with my kids.
I suspect a week will not be enough. I'm feeling like a year is what I really need, but for now, a week will have to suffice. Perhaps enough to change gears, whether to neutral, to downshift, or to upshift into turbo mode. Who knows? What I do know is that I don't want to haul everything from my pre-pandemic life into my post-pandemic life. I mean that literally, in that I've been recycling, tossing, shredding, at a rapid rate since I decided to move/moved. Moving to even a temporary rental space has made me look at my possessions and how I live with fresh eyes. It has made me understand that maintaining the status quo has really been a literal weight I've been carrying around. (why did I think I needed business insurance policies from 2009???) And I mean looking at life metaphorically. We don't get handed the gift of a real 'what's it all about, Alfie?' moment in our lives very often. I don't plan on squandering this gift, even if it was hard, painful, deadly for too many.
And so, I'll see you in a week. Probably.