I wonder if that’s what ‘Life’ does, getting in the way, forcing us to take our eyes off the ball, allowing us to forget what’s important… In many respects it’s also the easy option, isn’t it? A kind of abdication. Knowing what matters to us, believing in it, keeping the faith – all of that requires attention, dedication. To do it justice – whatever ‘it’ might be – demands something unremitting. It’s a full-time job.
One of the outcomes of the current pandemic has been, for me as for many others I assume, the opportunity to reflect and re-evaluate. Not needing to commute to an office, being able to “work from home” and not be 100 miles away from the family Monday to Friday, having more time to spend with both them and myself – and more time in my environment and not someone else’s – all of that has promoted if not enforced reflection. And reflection leads to reassessment.
Some of that navel-gazing is what you might call “profound”, I suppose. But that’s too grandiose a work for plain and simple honesty.
Yet what value does that reassessment have, you might ask. Well, none – unless we do something about it. And, having rediscovered what’s truly important to me, I feel as if I am about to do something about it. There are steps to be taken – many of them, no doubt – and indeed I have taken the first (of which more in a later post). Now it’s all about having the courage to take the second, and then the next one after that…
I was out for a walk yesterday evening. Someone had been mowing grass along a riverside path, and as I walked, it was as if I was smelling the wonderful fragrance of newly-mown grass for the very first time. It was heady, intoxicating. In the context of this post’s subject it’s no more than a simple metaphor, of course, but all at once it seemed as if I had forgotten that smell, lost it along the way… It was sublime to be reacquainted with it.
Ian Gouge - Writer 