Bigging up the important but neglected.
I commonly cut sleep short to get everything done. For the past couple of days I haven’t. I missed publishing one of my weekday blog posts as a result, but I got a great night’s sleep instead, something I badly needed.
Many of us live in triage mode, as we shoe horn more and more tasks into an ever shrinking day. We’re spinning plates, figuring out which ones are made of rubber and might bounce rather than break. We admire those who work late, or get up early; we don’t heap praise on those who wake properly rested.
We address what is urgent, and neglect what is important, we can’t help ourselves. We undervalue the wrong things in life, the coronavirus has shown us that.
During the coronavirus pandemic we haven’t been grateful for hedge fund managers, social influencers, or sports personalities – the highly paid. In the early days of the pandemic we were grateful for nurses, cleaners, and grocery store workers – the poorer paid.
During the coronavirus pandemic we weren’t grateful for a high street store or a freeway, we valued postal deliveries, and time spent walking in a park or on a beach.
During the coronavirus pandemic we wanted time with family, or just a hug.
The world won’t go back to normal, and maybe that’s a good thing because a lot needed to be improved. While it’s still fresh in our memory let’s try to turn these things upside down. Let’s make our new normal a better normal.
