What story are you going to tell?

When you go back to your ‘normal’ routine, and someone asks what you did with your time in quarantine, what story are you going to tell?

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve read many shared thoughts and articles about how fragile life is, how one thread unravels us all, and how we can all lose everything we have in a blink of an eye. All true.

However, in a consistent manner with my rose-coloured-glasses outlook on life, I would like to take a more positive twist: how much of an adventure life is.

We all love our routines, work hard to build and set them up. In fact, the first few conversations we had when we all started working from home were about everyone’s attempts to structure and normalize their new lives — the first thing we want to do when we are faced with a change, is find a new norm.

Many of us complain about a monotonous life, yet as soon as we get the chance at changing it, we yearn and re-organize our lives to find a new monotony.

I am no different. I also looked for a new norm and structure, a motivation to wake up early, a schedule to go by. Whoever of us had a 9–5, tried to go back to the 9–5 schedule we had. Those of us who went to spin or HIIT classes found ways to reintegrate them into our new norms. We went back to ordering from our favourite spots. In a way, it’s endearing, what we do when we are faced with this.

Let’s leave aside the negative impacts of this period for now. This is a unique and unprecedented time, one we are likely never to witness or live through again — what do we want to get out of it? How are we going to look back and know we came out better than how we went in? When you go back to your ‘normal’ routine, and someone asks you what you did with your time in quarantine, what story are you going to tell?

The world has given us an opportunity to reset, hit the Pause button for us — are we going to live the same way we used to when we hit Play again? We dream of being able to step back and look at our lives for a second, a minute, we complain about the world moving too fast and not getting a chance to breathe. Well, the only thing moving fast now are added social restrictions, everything else has slowed down. In other words, this is your chance.

What are you grateful for and want to keep? What do you want to change? What are you going to do with this chance?

For me…

People
I remind myself every day how grateful I am for those closest to me. How much I love and care about them, and how happy I am to have built these relationships which will withstand this period through and make me better for it. I am more connected with my sisters, and my cousins in Jordan than I have been in years [for the past few days, we play a few rounds of cards at a timezone-convenient time every day, a game we all used to play growing up together]. I am in touch with friends and colleagues more often who I might not have usually interacted with as often if I didn’t happen to bump into them in the office.

Fitness
I started working out more often — with the saved time of commute and less social commitments, I wake up and work out, have coffee, work for the day, then work out once or twice again in the evening. I used to stick to my 1–2 fitness studios, now I am lucky the world has opened up countless workout options I am getting to try. I even did a yoga workout this morning — something new to me.

Education
We all have these books we always wanted to read. Or simply have the goal of reading more. I have made an effort to read the Economist with more focus. I am currently reading two books — Nine pints [a story about human blood — I know sounds odd, but kinda cool], and Blowout [the history of the oil industry]. My boyfriend and I decided to read a book together today, he is almost finished reading my favourite book [Atlas Shrugged], so we are going to read the Life of Socrates next [which he read in Latin growing up in Italy, and which he picked because of my love for philosophy].

The funny part is, all these options were always available to us. I could have always connected more with my friends, family, and colleagues. I could have always tried different workouts. But … we all get into a routine. Well, we were kicked right out of it. What now?

We might have one more week of this, two weeks, one month, or several. None of us know. You only have today. We can’t even plan tomorrow. We typically plan a week, a month ahead. Today, we plan for the day. So set a goal for the day. An intention. Then set another tomorrow.

I have shared some of mine. What are yours?

[co-inspired by Natalie Daguiam]