Having experienced the lockdown on my own skin, I am glad to go out again (even if with restrictions): to see my friends, clients, colleagues… or just to observe people around me. And I hope that for seeing my family and friends abroad it won’t take too long time anymore either. But for certain things I do not want to go back to where I was before.
When the restrictions started in Luxembourg, I decided to follow them, as advised by our government. Firstly, no one would know how to do better. But mainly I believed that we had to go through this situation as the whole society together.
Some have been affected more, some less, but each of us has got a unique opportunity to look at our life from a different perspective: How stable am I in my life? Am I able to take care of myself and my family, if the state does not help me? How happy am I with how I live? Do I miss to have a family / partner / children? Have I done enough for my health before not to feel threatened by the virus? Am I likely to panic? Do I get aggressive when I do not know what is going on? Am I happy with how we function at home?…
It is really useful to feel what we truly miss or dislike in our lives - this frustration can help us overcome our own obstacles and search for a solution. But it is not only about negatives. In these special circumstances, many have positive experiences: getting more rest, being more with their kids and partners, feeling motivated to be able to work from home - it feels good to be integrated and earn their living not having to commute, enjoying much more their homes. In our village, going for walk feels like a holiday without all the traffic passing through us for commuting to work and back. Whatever positives we have found, the good feeling about it (if we listen to it) can help us revise our values and create a new, much more fulfilling life style.
I like the words of our Prime minister: “We are going back to normality but not to the life before.” We can influence how our new normality will look like. All of us, having been confronted with our most important values: If each of us takes this experience seriously and improves his/her quality of life - how much healthier and happier society we can have in the future!
In the next article I will write about my own experience with the pandemic. As I am someone interested in relationships, I will mainly write about our relations at home - how we have evolved through this situation and what we want to keep also for the future.