My Covid Times Diary – The Great Pause | The Ministry of Happiness

My Covid Times Diary – The Great Pause

You cannot fast-forward time, you cannot rewind it, and you cannot pause it; you can only waste or benefit from it. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

I was thinking the other day while out on a run about what this shelter in place time really means for us. Seems to me that in many ways this is a great pause. The situation has put so many things on hold. For me personally, it has put some travel plans on hold, the opportunity to see my oldest niece graduate from high school, a chance to see my littlest niece before her first birthday, but nothing too serious for me. At my college it gets a little more serious, due to the hands on nature of some of our career technical courses, we’ve had to pause those classes. This means that some students who fully expected to be completing certificates or degrees in those ares won’t be able to do that for a time. I imagine for a lot of people a lot of things are on pause, birthday celebrations, weddings, celebrations of all kinds. Given both the health and economic realities we’re facing, a whole lot of things, for a whole lot of people are about to be on pause.

I think for a lot of people, the fear, anxiety and uncertain of this time leads to some less than ideal behavior. It’s all too easy to let it get to you, to end up eating poorly, not exercising and finding yourself too often on the couch watching TV or Netflix with a bag of chips or cookies in your hand. A few drinks too many are also easy to get into during uncertain times. That’s another way that this can be a great pause, if you just try an hunker down and avoid the whole damn thing. And honestly, a little bit of that is probably not the worst thing right now. We all live too fast and try to do too much, if this situation allows for a little pause to all of that, that’s ok, might even be a good thing. Now I know those of you with little kids who are reading this are likely thinking how wonderful it would be for any pause right now. Especially those of you who are working, home schooling and trying to take care of a home and family. Obviously, this post won’t be so relevant to you right now. But please know I admire what you’re doing, what you’re going through and hopefully in the long run they’ll be some silver linings out of this you can’t see right now.

The question for all of us is at this point, what do you do with the pause? From the quote above, we have two choices, “we can only waste or benefit from this pause.” So which will it be my friends, will you waste or benefit from the great pause?

Personally, I’m trying to do my best to benefit from it. I started this week getting better about working out more consistently and getting a bit more writing done. Over the last few years I’ve been completing a book a year and it’s been tough this year to commit to finishing another, but today I decided which one I’ll focus on and complete by December. This means scheduling regular writing time and given that I’m working and working out from home, I’m saving the drive time and hopefully I can put that toward my writing project and get the book done.

We all have those sorts of things we can work if we have a little extra time during the great pause. So what can you do my friends, how will you benefit from the great pause?

~ Michael ‘Rev’ Kane