March 26, 2020 — Here’s a lesson I welcomed into my reality yesterday: sift your priorities through a new filter. If you’re hitting walls, feeling…. yes, I’m going to say it, UNPRODUCTIVE, you absolutely need to reassess your priorities. There’s a new filter on our collective lives right now. The virus. It’s a filter though, not a wall. Stay with me.

If you were all of a sudden house-bound back during the “old normal”, you would just carry on and be productive in the old normal way. You’d likely be killing it because you just got all this staycation time and everything is as you have known for ages. You have ALL your energy and focus PLUS time??? What a gift!!

However, now you’re housebound, but almost everything is radically DIFFERENT. Your brain and heart are stuffed with “what if??” and all these unknowns about how long this will be, and so many certain dire ramifications on the economy and social interaction going forward that it’s like the proverbial square peg in a round hole.

But it’s just a different filter. Life carries on. Of course it does.

So, I encourage you to PICK UP a new peg and search for its right hole. You will likely have to pick up several pegs and try several holes. And some days the peg will work and other days not so much. All of a sudden I’m reminded of those plastic shape-sorter toys for toddlers that encourage them to put different shapes into their matching holes, teaching them mental and physical dexterity…star, square, circle, oval, triangle. After getting them all in, you then open the toy releasing the shapes, and START ALL OVER. Learning and practicing, on repeat.

That’s what it’s going to take in this period of uncertainty, change and reprioritization.

I’m actually looking forward to that time when we are allowed back into society and then our lives “return to normal” not just for the reasons that are obvious, but because I’m going to have re-adjusted my priorities. I will have seen and felt what it’s like to have my family at home all around me, being together with all its ups and downs, felt that “slower” life of not driving everywhere all the time, enjoyed a not psychotically over-scheduled day, done yoga or taken walks every single day…and I’ll realize:

OHHHHHHHH. This is how it’s meant to be. More like when the babies were little little. Parks, sprinklers in the yard, sidewalk chalk, puzzles, reading, cooking, extended bath time, tending to the house and each other. Being home a lot more.

There was a certain deep sweetness to that slower pace of life. Even though it’s crazy and scary right now with the virus threat, I still feel some of that sweetness now. I hear more kids outside and see lots more people on walks, riding, walking dogs. I hear fewer cars whooshing down the street. We are cooking and talking. (Not so much CLEANING…ha!) Truly, my house is filthy, but I don’t actually care that much right now. Not a priority.

It’s nice in this surreal yet real way.

I encourage you to cast off old filters and seek to try on these new ones, and note how nicely that square peg fits into its right hole.

Cheers to you on your daily journey. And always tell yourself, “yay me!” because you rock!