The New Normal
Written by Kate • April 6, 2020 •
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I just read a quote that stated “the world is a great teacher to the wise and an enemy to the fool”. That quote sinks in with me because I often look at what is happening to me or around me for the deeper lesson.
Now that we’re in lockdown for the next 2 months, life has obviously slowed down considerably. There are no playrgrounds to take the kids to. No schedule to adhere to. Just seemingly endless days with nothing to do.
For me, however, this time of #coronavirus lockdown reminds a great deal of my time in Peace Corps, when I was posted to the West African country of Benin. I lived in a small village with no running water or electricity. This was even before the internet or the advent of the cell phone. It was just me, in a small village of about 2,000 Beninois and my books. The longer I was at my post, the slower life felt until it got to the point where I could lie still for an hour and just be. Not sleeping, little thinking of thoughts about a future or a past. I just was.
Of course I visited with my Peace Corps friends and started to make friends with people in my village but overall my life was very very slow and uneventful. No phone. No Netflix. No cinema/movies. No place to travel to. No future to strive for. Just two years of being in the here and now.
The first few months were brutal. My mind went crazy trying to maintain my old patterns of striving for a future life, to make myself better, to do more and to try more. I wept many tears. I distinctly remember my Dad’s birthday in early October and I started to do some push ups and I was so overcome with sorrow that I wasn’t at home to celebrate his birthday and I was so bored with my life, that I cried throughout the entire work out session.
But after about 4 months, I adapted. I slowed down and it became my new normal. And after two years, I reveled in the peace and the pace of my new life. I was present. I in the non doing doing. Where I did what rose up in me to do but wasn’t something I planned and schemed about in advance. I was so peaceful and content.
Arriving back in the US was such a shock and my ability to stay present didn’t last long as I quickly assumed my old life habits of striving and trying to do better, be better, be different.
I see this time of lockdown inviting me to do the same thing. I’m reminded so strongly of all the positive aspects of my Peace Corps experience. I’m delighted to begin the slowing down of my life. And as I slow down, I notice the thoughts that arise about how I should be doing more and my brain is intently telling me that others think I should do “this” differently. The “this” is pretty much everything, how I do every thing.
It’s such a gift, to slow down and be present. To take the time to notice your thoughts and habits and to just notice them.
The world will likely not return to “normal” anytime soon with the realization that more animals are now virus reservoirs and we can catch the coronavirus from cats, dogs, and tigers we would visit at the zoo.
Don’t hold on rigidly to what was. Find the gifts in what is. Life will be less painful when you allow what is actually happening to be without trying to change it.
As Glennon Doyle says, we can do hard things together.