Unexpected Trouble…

While visiting a longtime friend some time ago he showed me around his woodworking shop.  I remarked about what great shape his tools were in and asked him how old they were.  He replied that many of them had been in use 30-plus years.  When I asked how he kept them so well, he smiled and said “In life, it’s all about taking care of things”.

It’s a good idea to periodically ask, “am I taking good care of things?”  Your home, your work and doing an expert job day in and day out, your family members, your friends…all those relationships we hold close to our hearts.  It’s pretty common to take most things for granted, to simply expect “they’ll be here when I need them”.  We get used to, normalized to, the constancy of life around us, the predictability.  We wind up relying on things to stay the same so we can depend on them.  It’s understandable for us humans to function like this.  And then something comes along and upsets our stable world – COVID 19.

I don’t want to turn this post into a lecture about Coronavirus.  Most of us already know plenty about it, how to understand it and deal with it.  It’s a reality, it won’t go away.  In place now are sweeping “self-quarantine” and “shelter-in-place” recommendations aimed at slowing the spread of the virus.  Many establishments, schools in particular, are closed, folks are working from home and the general tension level in our nation is high.  We don’t know when this current situation will end.  Given this crisis and uncertainty, how might we best respond?

Certainly we should exercise all the cautions and protocols we’ve been educated about lately.  Build new self-care practices into our lives.  Do our best to adjust to a situation we didn’t invite but feel fearful and anxious about.  Reconnect with others we haven’t contacted lately.  Be present and supportive with our family members, loved ones we innocently got out of touch with while living our busy lives.  Take stock of our lives and be grateful for what we have, regardless of current insecurities and inconveniences.  Instead of simply feeling victimized by COVID-19, let’s take advantage of opportunities it may paradoxically be affording us.