Snail Mail & Slowing Down

This whole pandemic is awful. Like, seriously the worst. We seniors got robbed of our last few months with our friends before throwing our caps and saying our goodbyes. Doctors are stretched thin, people are sick, and fear is spreading fast. We’re stuck in our homes for seemingly endless days, and, while I love my family dearly, I’m not sure we can last much longer cooped up in this house. But this pessimism isn’t helping, so here is my attempt at isolation optimism.
While this time is undoubtedly more bad than good, it has given the entire world a chance to breathe. There is now a common enemy to fight against, communities are uniting with paper hearts in windows, and we learn very quickly not to take our comfort for granted. We’re offered the chance to rest and look up more instead of being so focused on the day-to-day musings of the restless modern world. This year especially, I’ve noticed in depth the incredible overuse of the word “busy,” as if everyone feels the need to prove their importance or has forgotten the ancient art of boredom. I do it too. It’s easy to make excuses for our growing “if only we had more time” to-do lists, but now we do. There’s built-in margin for most of us – we have all the time in the world.
When writing this, I looked up the main things that people say they wish they had more time for, and my findings included more time to sleep, read, exercise, pursue hobbies, and spend time with their families. Now’s the time to do these things. There are no strong expectations of us to be somewhere else. I know personally I’m thankful for the chance to read books that have been collecting dust for months, paint hearts on my shoes because I feel like it, write letters to faraway friends, call my grandparents(they’re kind of angels, right?), learn French, and read on the roof with my little sister. Most of these things are the first to go when we get pressed for time, and they may seem easily sacrificial to a citizen of the rushed world, but things have slowed down. I get it, it’s hard to romanticize such an extremely terrifying period of time. At the very least, though, we can recognize the oddness of the situation and realize it may(fingers crossed) never happen again.
Spring is coming and bringing blue skies and sun to citizens previously deprived of vitamin D, which hopefully adds a level of inspiration. So start the blog, plan the most epic summer road trip, take your dog for a walk, try to use that film camera you got years ago, sit down at the piano again, learn to sew, and tell your people how absolutely cool they are. At some point, the world will resume its previous speed, we will set out to be our usual busybodies, and we may never have the chance to be this bored again.