I found it easy to get into a kind of state of mind where it’s all about waiting.
I just want all of this situation to end.
Now, I’ve already talked about how it’s never gonna go back to “normal”.
There’s no “going back”, because time will always move forward into something new.
So everything that we had, that time is always gone.
Just like the past is always gone.
So there’s no going back.
But it’s still possible to wait for the present restrictions to end, and just be waiting for the next new phase when we can- I keep trying to avoid saying the words “go back”.
We can’t go back to anything.
But at least we can start doing some activities again that we currently cannot.
And I think because all this is still sinking in, because it’s just so strange and different, it’s almost like an automatic reaction to just kind of be holding on, just trying to get by, and just putting anything important off until the situation clears.
Sort of, even if not consciously thinking of this, but just sort of imagining that this will soon end, and so my job now is just to get through it.
Now, maybe this is true to some extent of a sinking-in period, that we’re still all adjusting to the new way of living now, and it seems like this does take time to really adjust and change our way of living and our ways of thinking, so that we can match the way things are now.
So in that sense, there is kind of a just waiting, because we’re kind of waiting for it to sink in, waiting for our minds and our habits to adjust to the new state.
But it seems like just waiting for it all to be clear, now, that’s a different story.
And this clearly seems to me to be a less than ideal state, because it’s just kind of killing time.
And anytime there’s killing time, just waiting for time to pass, it always makes me think that something’s off.
Something’s off with the program if the attitude is just passing time, letting time go by until something changes.
Because as I often like to talk about how short life is, and how precious time is, we simply don’t have the time to spare, you know, in just, you know, we can just discard a few months of our lives, maybe even a year.
We can’t just say “Oh well, I’ll just let that pass and just forget about it.” No, this is time that we’re alive right.
Now this is as much part of our lifespans as any other time.
so we can’t just be waiting for things to go away.
And one thing that I found has been helpful for me to remind myself of that is to look up how long this is going to take, look up the estimates of how long this is going to take.
And the first day I did that, a few weeks ago, was the first day that the reality started to sink in, that wow, this is not going to be over soon.
And today there was a new announcement here in this city that measures should be expected to take at least 12 weeks, and there’s government reports saying, you know, many months.
So when I get this kind of figure in my head, it kind of forces me to forget about waiting.
Because if I don’t know how long it’s gonna take, I can just kind of say “OK, maybe it’ll end soon.
It’ll end soon.
I’ll just hold on, hold on, one more week, one more week, one more week.” But if I can really let it sink in and really let it accept, let myself accept, that this is going to be at least three months, now suddenly it becomes harder to just let myself wait.
It’s like no, this is the way things are now.
This is the current situation.
And so I need to find some way to best use this time.
So forget about waiting for things to change.
Things are what they are now, and now is our time to live.
#livenow #dontwait #toolongtowait