When you go from non-stop, always-on, packing-unpacking, carpooling and juggling, to this, it feels like a jolt. The slamming stop of a rollercoaster, and we’re all on it in our own little cars, looking around making sure everyone’s ok.
Often when we take a vacation, it always takes a few days to really get unplugged and focused on the “just this” mindset. I know it to be true for me, that the drain of work and multi-double-booking, takes a while to drain out of my brain so I can actually relax.
But this COVID-19 is something so different, isn’t it. We try to relate it to these other things, but it’s not like anything we’ve been through before. For some of us, our work life is just gone as we knew it. It’s bottom-dropping-out, stunning, instant change. The difference is that we’re all in it together! The community around the shared situation is simply wonderful and fascinating. Celebrities are giving out their cell phone numbers and designers are helping to make health-care masks.
There’s also an interesting truth in the shelter-in-place edicts. If we all just do the right thing, the government won’t have to mandate executive orders and enact new laws and pull out the big curfews, fines, consequences and whatnot. (Sort of like the call to feed our poor and caring for our widows?) It seems like we’re getting the hang of it. Maybe we’re learning something new at a deeper level.
It’s not that difficult, right? We have screens and content G A L O R E. We just need to look up and out, call our churches and schools and find out who needs help.
We’re in the “just this.” This is it. This is the day to do the thing we always wish we could do. Call grandma, learn a language, a dance or something new about our family’s history. Take a day off. Write just one page of your memoir. Throw a Frisbee with your son. Imagine.
Enjoy! I pray you find comfort in “just this” today.
