| Dear John, This morning, as I filled the bird feeders, changed the water in their bath, and tended to the seeds I’ve started for the deck garden, I thought about how I used to rush through these daily chores to get to the gym or to attend a meeting for work, pre-pandemic. Puttering had become a luxury and finding time for household chores was often an annoyance. After nearly two months of sheltering in place, I’m noticing a shift. Without the support of a housekeeper, I’ve discovered that my husband Michael is quite talented at vacuuming, and I actually feel more connected to our home cleaning bathrooms and washing floors. (Does that sound crazy? 😀) I’m also a better cook than I give myself credit for and sharing meals with Michael every night has become a comforting ritual that I’d like to keep in place. So many of us are falling in love with a new kind of simplicity. We’re finding joy in nature. We’re navigating new, more efficient ways of working and doing business. We’re rethinking how we spend our money and understanding the high cost of having debt. And we’re engaging in honest conversations about the desire for a less stressful, more meaningful life. This evaluation is fostering a new level of self-awareness that can only benefit us all. In the beginning, when it was clear we were in the midst of a pandemic, I felt a bit like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, desperate to return home to some sense of normalcy and stability. But, unlike Dorothy, I would soon discover that the old home was gone for good. Instead, uncertainty had become our new residence. Now, it looks like we’re all faced with the challenge of building an intimate relationship with uncertainty and it may turn out to be a good thing. Asking questions, getting to know ourselves on a deeper level, re-evaluating our priorities, and facing tough decisions, are what it takes to build such a strong connection to ourselves that we can rely on to weather any storm. And that’s where we find true security. Today, I’m welcoming a new normal. If I’m too busy to clean a bathroom, I’m too busy. If I don’t have time to cook a meal and enjoy it with my husband, something has to give. If work demands more energy than feels good to my mind and body, the business needs to be altered in some way to accommodate a new priority of simplicity, time for puttering, and peace. It’s really that simple. This morning, while in the middle of writing this blog, I opened my email to find several messages from friends with the same link to a story that captured the gift of uncertainty in such a beautiful way. Whether you’ve already seen this or not, please enjoy. It’s called “The Great Realisation” and I invite you to watch it here. “May you prefer the world you’ve found to the one you left behind…” Love,
Cheryl
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