Life is lovely. And sometimes not so much. Our heads can get cluttered with “stuff” and it can be difficult to auto-refresh. Certainly, the biggest “stuff” to address right now is self-distancing. It’s a change, and as with any change, there is an acceptance curve. What can we do in this time, how can we do it, and what might we expect when this situation is over? What will your new normal look like?
During this self-distancing, physical distancing, or whatever you call it, we may find it difficult to adjust or take pause to understand what it really going on. Yes, we don’t have the freedom we usually have just to go and do. Someone is telling us what to do. Most of us don’t particularly like that. There is new information almost every day to digest and we don’t know what the future will hold. We generally like our routine, our pattern, and strangely, perhaps the “busy-ness” clutter because we don’t have to think about what is really important. But now we do.
A great Pause has been given to us. At this time, we can take inventory. Even if we are juggling work, children, elderly parents, cooking, cleaning, there is time to pause to figure out how to live this “gift” we are given. There are these magnificent small or large blocks of quiet pause and time to awe. Time to think, “how do we do X?” We are being given time to live life differently for a while and consider how to live differently in the future. In the big scheme 
of things, it is only a little while.
We now have the luxury of time that we may have dreamed of on a daily basis, in our recent past life, to do the things we say we want to do. Have time with our family. Our children. Send notes or visit with our special friends. Learn a skill even if it is virtual happy hours. We can read a book. Just stop, look, listen, and feel. And yes, we have to think about the greater good, the fear of the economy, and more. It can get so overwhelming, sometimes we just need to actively and consciously press the “Power” then “Reset” buttons to get our motors going again.
What if we asked ourselves –
Will I be the same person after this once-in-a-lifetime event or will I be the same? What do I think about that? Am I OK with that? Am I taking this time to think about my now past life and is it really the way I think it should be for me, my family, etc.?
How much do I really want to go back to a zoom-zoom life?
How much do I want to go back to a life that is so packed that I don’t have time (or make excuses not to make time) to call my mother, my children, or my best friend?
How much do I want to go back to a life that is so busy that when someone asks me how I am doing, the first thing out of my mouth is, “Busy!”
Being busy has become the watchword of American society. It’s the verbal sign that we are successful and fulfilling our dreams, albeit tiring. If we aren’t busy, then what are we? Lazy? Unproductive? Unmotivated? We tend to thumb our noses at those who are seemingly not being productive or don’t have laundry lists of things to do. What would happen if someone were to respond, “Great! Just enough! Any more would be too much! In a great place!” Those very few people I know who do respond in that frame of thought seem to be a bit more interesting and calming to my usual giving of an eye roll, sigh, and “busy.”
I’m a beekeeper. My bees appear busy all the time foraging, serving as nurse bees crawling all over the frames, feeding the young, capping brood and sprucing up spent comb to prep for new eggs. It is almost tiring to watch them in action and easy to think humans should be like as well. But bees do sleep five to eight hours a day. They rest. The girls take turns moving and flapping their wings to keep the cluster at a cozy 95ish degrees. When returning from foraging, they are patient as they wait their turn to fly into the hive. They read each other, share pheromones and communication dances to know what is going on with the colony, with the external environment, and where the best foraging is nearby. In other words, honey bees are social.
And so, somehow, we think we must be busy as bees all the time. That idle hands are the devil’s workshop. The early bird gets the worm. It seems, if we aren’t always physically doing something important every moment of the day, we are somehow not living up to expectations. That when we are leaving this world, we will have regrets we didn’t do something when most people regret time with others.
Looking back at major events affecting most of or the entire world, (and this is one of them), we took new things with us and left things behind. We took new technology and left old tasks behind. We learned new thoughts and left old patterns behind. We left some of our belief baggage along the path and only took what was relevant and helpful into the new. Much like any transformational change, there will be bringing on the new (like masks) and shaking off the old, wondering how we ever did what we did.
Thoughts to Ponder About What Your New Normal Look Like
How are you planning your life for the end of this self-distancing however it transitions and whenever it is over?
Will it be possible to ask in regret, “Remember when were given extra time and we didn’t use?”
Will it be possible to share, “Remember when we had time to pause, to do things differently, and it was (memorable, magnificent, soulful!)”
Will it be possible to tell ourselves, “I’m so happy to be back to my old way of life?”
Will it be possible to drop the use of “busy” and “swamped” in our future language with others?
Will it be possible that in the future, we may ask ourselves, “What happened? I did not want to go back to “busy” and “swamped”?
How will you use this time we have let to sort out the world as we know it and bring new light to your life?
What will your new normal look like?
