Turn dial to hit Re-set

Out of the blue, home for 2 months. No time to prepare either psychologically or otherwise for close confinement with our loved ones; you know, the people we love most but who we enjoy space from during our week? An interesting experiment in patience and communication like never before.

Now, just as abruptly, life allegedly is to resume but it’s a new life, a new reality with a lot of new rules and parameters to our behaviour and work, our social lives and identities and an unprecedentedly closer relationship with our government and powers that be.

Can this momentous pause that was lockdown and quarantine be a mechanism to hit that re-set button? Over the years we have spent an inordinate amount of time day dreaming about that button, about if we had a sabbatical from work or some other vessel for substantial time off where we could really reflect on our lives and just be. Well, like it or not, here it is.

For this pandemic to perhaps serve some sort of ‘re-set purpose’ I propose the following crucial questions as good starting points for exploring these types of issues and turning post- COVID into a more meaningful, healthier existence. For our mental and emotional health, such reflective practice can be very cathartic.

A Starting Point

~Who did you actually miss seeing while in lockdown?

~Who does it actually hurt not to be able to hug or embrace while observing social distancing?

~Who did you not even notice was absent from your life?

~What issues did being confined together raise?

~Do you like who you became under quarantine conditions?

~Are you itching to go out or is there residual, new anxiety around being possibly exposed to the virus?

~How do you now feel about your country and the powers in charge? Do you feel taken care of, protected?

~If there is another pandemic in our futures (as experts warn there is), what will you have in readiness for it this time?

The answers to these perhaps awkward questions may well help us re-assess our priorities and how we really want to live from now on, perhaps COVID can stand for the time when life hit pause and before we hit play again we pressed re-set and truly evaluated who we were and what we were going to do with the next chapter of our lives.