How has the Corona Virus lockdown changed behaviors around the world? In our household, we’ve started cooking far more, we’ve communicated better, and we listen to more music. We started Yoga, along with several other habits that didn’t stick. Our lives moved along, sometimes quickly during long spells of routine, but often slowly during times of anxiety and uncertainty. Those long glacial stretches wore on us and we each coped in our own ways. But then the weather started turning, and the outside beckoned, and slowly, things were getting better. Now the world feels like it’s getting back to normal, but I recognize it looks that way from my privileged position. I know my mother is still scared, as well as countless more in the United States and around the world.
Albeit, there’s a sense of urgency now to get back outside, to start life again. Many people are probably coming to grips with how they’ve changed during the pandemic. At the start it felt like the beginning of a grand experiment in self-improvement, but as it winds down there’s probably people out there looking at this as a missed opportunity. I don’t think that’s right. We all cope with stress in different ways. We are surviving a pandemic. That’s enough for us. When we do finally emerge from this, don’t consider all the missed chances you had to make yourself better, but look at the ways in which you helped others. We all communicated more in the pandemic, we all thought about our loved ones more than usual, and we were all more present in our environments. Let’s take some of that with us when we emerge from our lockdowns. I know I will.