Lately, I have been spending a lot of time looking out windows. The view from my window will be different than yours. Yet in this situation, we now find the “new normal” for our day-to-day lives. Our challenges seem to be quite the same. That vacation we had planned for June, the same one we have taken the last thirteen years now suddenly will not be happening. The week in August we usually have the grandchildren, may or may not happen. Will the coronavirus attack me and my loved ones? There is a nervous energy brewing of things to come or not. Life has suddenly become a very solid fragile.
But wasn’t it always? Our first responders live it every day, not just during the COVID-19 days. Maybe, just maybe we are all getting an amazing blessing at the same time, to remember that nothing is certain or “a given” in this life of ever-changing circumstances.
Time doesn’t change. It just keeps ticking into the next twenty-four-hour day. The same sixty minutes are in the same hours and the same sixty seconds are in the same minutes.
Yet, circumstances within each twenty-four-hour day have certainly changed for all of us the last two months. Tim and I have not been going to fun spring events, graduations, retirements, or Walmart. We aren’t looking ahead to make plans since every day seems a new challenge to overcome the fear of getting groceries.
Time doesn’t change. We change. We grow older. We fall in and out of love. We adopt pets. We have children. We buy new cars and new houses. We deal with emergencies and tragedies. We learn new jobs and languages. We have babies. We bury loved ones and we learn how to navigate Zoom. We, humans, are always in a time situation and the constant is our ever-changing situation in time.
Our existence depends on time. A time to reap. A time to sew. Time to use thyme in that recipe you pulled up from long ago. Yep, I have also been doing a lot of cooking and rhyming while looking out the view from my window. It appears self-entertainment is on the rise when not studying Facebook or dancing to TikTok, all of which are very non-essential to some of us.
That said, there are many essential things we need every day. Here’s to the essential workers that give every day so that we may continue our “normal” day-to-day lives. Blessings and stay safe.
FFAM
