These Lock Down times are leading many, many of us to think hard about what we are doing, and ways we could be doing it better. We may be stressing about things, worried about our health, and health of others. We may be having to work and not liking to, or working and wishing we weren’t.
Times at the moment are different for all of us in Western Nations. Things are scaled back, and we are missing out on many things. Some of those things, we may have realised, weren’t as necessary as we’d thought, and we’re learning to manage in other ways. Other things may still feel necessary, and we feel we’re missing out, because we can’t get them.
It may be a time to look at how our pets manage their days. I look at my dog, and from what I’ve seen, her life is more or less the same as it was before Covid-19 came into our lives. The main difference, is that my husband and I are home even more than we were previously. We are both retired from work though, so that’s not that surprising.
At this time of year, my husband would usually be out all afternoon on a Saturday, playing Lawn Bowls, and I would be out on Thursday afternoon at my writing group. We are both now home, instead. And from a dog’s point of view, having the humans at home is always a good thing. Humans mean pats, and food, and the door opened to go out, and then to come back in again.
There will be a time though, when sports happen again, and catching up to have a meeting in a hotel will be allowed. My writing group have been meeting online, and have discovered some interesting differences in how we do our meetings when together in person, rather than together online, some of which are better. There are some troublesome aspects of the online meeting, though, or if not troublesome, then definitely very different.
One thing I feel many of us are missing though, the friendly touches, the hugs, the pat on the shoulder, the smiles and the silly things. You can’t do these things in a virtual world. And if you can’t see each other, you miss out on many nuances of what is happening in a conversation.
Shopping, that’s been a strange thing too. Having supermarkets run out of necessary goods, that was definitely a new, and very much unwanted thing. Will 2020 be remembered as the year we ran out of toilet paper, and couldn’t get any more?
My feelings about this time, are that many of use realised the importance of being together with friends, and looking out for each other. And it’s been a time of valuing and appreciating the small things others do for us, when they can. Life is different, and in some ways, the new way of things is better, less impatient, more forgiving, more thoughtful. I think time spent ‘locked in’ at home, without a job to go to, has given us both permission and time, to finally do things we’ve wanted to try in the past, but couldn’t.
Being able to finally do these things, is definitely a positive thing. Personally, I have begun working on an Anthology, based around the creative writing responses of writers to “Covid-19”. It feel as though this time has been waiting for me to do something big, and I feel like I must do this. At the moment, I have only only ten or so pieces for this Anthology, but I can feel there is a great upswell of thoughts and ideas, creative writing, that can, and will fill, the pages of this Anthology.
As soon as I came up with the title, I know I had to do this. “Plague Invasion” was the phrase that hit me, and I’ve now taken it up as definitely the title of my new word-related thing. I’ve since expanded the title to “Plague Invasion – Creative Writing in Response to Covid-19”, to make it clear what the work is all about. But the responses I’ve received so far, and my own written responses, are different, as our lives and responses to these times are also different.
I’ve read comments that these times are an introvert’s version of perfect times, and an extrovert’s version of hell, and I suppose there’s truth to that idea, but introverts don’t hate people, most of them, they just like alone time, more than extroverts do. Extroverts like to talk, to discuss things, all things, and to get ides from others and what is happening all around them. These, of course are generalisations, as is my thought that introverts are more like cats, and extroverts dogs, particularly happy bouncing ones, bounding constantly from one thing to the next.
Cats would be troubled perhaps by having so many people in the house, when they were used to many ‘alone’ times, and dogs happy to have their humans with them so much more … When (if) things change, who will be grateful for the change, and will things actually to back to how they were before, I wonder? What caused this? Could it have been stopped? Is mankind in some way to blame, or at least a little complicit. These are questions that will go on being considered, written about, and discussed for a long time. That’s what I think.
And for those who feel these current troubles have hidden away concerns about Global Climate change, I suspect the two things are far more connected than many realise, and those things that tie the two together will be subject to many more discussions and ideas. Times are achanging that’s for sure, can they ever really go back to how they were? And if they can, who really wants that? Do you? I don’t, not entirely. We have the chance to hold onto what we’re now learning about ourselves, and the world and new and better futures for ourselves and our planet. Are you up for the challenge of it?
