Sunday Thoughts
Bittersweet symphony thats lockdown.
Image by @piariverola
Tomorrow we will enter a new phase of easing restriction on our (government’s) roadmap to freedom. We are told that this is it, we are on a one way road back to things becoming more eased, social, all the before pandemic life. Yet it all seems to be moving a bit too soon that we (or at least I) need sometime to slow down and process my emotional sentiments on life on the inside.
I was reading Dr. Dennis Waitley’s book ‘The Psychology of Winning’, in it he explains that prisoners do not need to be doing things and even imagining doing tasks is a highly successful tool in accomplishing great things. Imagine I have done, this last lockdown has particularly fantasy filled; trips to the coffee shop drinking from actual cups while watching people interact, trips to a foreign country ( I’ve got Portugal on my mind), hanging out in my best friends garden laughing at our own silliness over copious amounts of food with hugs as well greet and part company, tennis game out in the sun with strangers you met in your neighbourhood message board and even cuddling my friend’s lockdown babies who are 14 months and 6 months old (not knowing life outside this inside of their short being). However, for me imagining doesn’t just cut it anymore. I need to be doing all of the above to get the dopamine hit of success.
There is also this part of me that has gotten used to ‘no plans’. No need to make up an excuse in favour of a Sunday spent reading or organising your spice cabinet. I have also taken to the new activities like painting on a Saturday morning, running consistently 3 times a week for over a year, gardening and the biggest change in my life is writing. All of these new hobbies feel extensions of myself but 12 months ago they were like unknown strangers. I haven’t yet decided if I am ready to trade in the new with the old again.
I keep wondering have I gotten comfortable or have I grown as a person, so the thought of return to ‘normal’ seems a step back. Will I be able to keep parts of the lockdown me, someone who went through massive internal expansion to gain perspective and clarity through words ( both other people’s and my own) that can only be accomplished in solitude?
“I’m out with lanterns looking for myself. ”