Reboot Life.

 I don’t know about you, but for me the Novelty of this Corona/Covid19 plague is starting to wear off. At first it was a welcome break to the routine of the rat race (as long as we all stayed healthy) , loads of free time to do all the odd jobs that have been lying around the house waiting for me to change into my handyman super hero disguise. Then there were the vague ‘doomed to fail’ promises to myself that I would write a book, learn a new language, learn yoga, get fit, learn a new skill etc etc etc. 

The D.I.Y. jobs are almost complete, I have started some more or less creative projects like these columns (I write mainly for myself). Getting fit is a slow burner, it comes and goes, somedays I go on really long walks and then spend a few days thinking ‘what’s the point’, but I try. 

Now I’m starting to think that this could be how we live for a good few months yet, so I have to get my head around the feeling of a new reality. A new way of living, a total change around in thinking, consuming  and working. All the ‘projects’ I had lined up for myself were plans to get through the lockdown, a temporary period, now I have to start thinking in terms of ‘what if stays like this? What then?’. 

I don’t mind the uncertainty, I can handle that, I learned long ago not to plan too much, I try to live- if not from day to day, then from month to month. We never have real control over our lives after all, we can plan, but we never know what hand fate will deal us. There are so many random influences on our lives that it makes it impossible to know exactly how life will turn out. ‘Plan for the future, but accept that it could all fall down’ said my Dad. An unexpected illness, career disappointments, accidents , lots of things can thwart any future plans that we make, we like to act as if we have everything under control - but here’s the thing, we don’t. 

‘Pluck the day’ the slogan we all have lying around somewhere, on a tea cup or wall , pluck the day, great slogan but it is a bit open ended isn’t it? I mean how are you supposed to put that into concrete plans? If you take it literally, nothing would ever get done would it? 

For myself I’ve come to terms with the thought that there is no real ‘meaning of life’ except life itself. We’re here anyway we might as well make the most of it. So the bars and restaurants are closed now? Well they will reopen one day, in the meantime I’ll use the time that I save by not going to lunch or sharing a drink with friends to do other things that I enjoy. This doesn’t mean I have no empathy toward Bar and restaurant owners who face economic ruin, it just means that on a personal level I have to make the situation we find ourselves in work for me and my family. The virus has laid a new obstacle in the path of life, we have to choose how we ‘get over or around it’. 

The only way to stop this crisis driving us mad is to embrace it, that sounds weird but what I mean is, take the new reality into account, and move on. 

It’s not just life in general that we will need to re-evaluate, we ourselves are being forced to take a fresh look at ourselves and find new ways of ‘being’. It’s one really huge social experiment and we find ourselves under the microscope. 

Stay Safe.