The world I grew up in doesn’t exist any longer. Sixty years ago, when I was a kid, the doors of our home were always unlocked. I played in the yard or in the woods behind the house by myself. When I was ten or twelve years old, I walked a mile to go to school. (Yes, there was a bus. But sometimes I just wanted to walk.) When at school, I and all the other kids had two parents living at home except for one girl whose father had died. Yes, it was a very different time.
The life I lived in 2019 also doesn’t exist any longer. In just a few months, it changed. I used to look forward to hanging out at a favorite pub where the servers knew me. Occasionally, I’d take my laptop to a coffee shop and spend as much time there as I pleased, sometimes scheduling appointments and meetings. I also traveled regularly, for work and leisure, always looking forward to being in different places. Something was freeing about the travel. Yes, it was a different time.
Now, even though my home state has few restrictions, I feel safest when having friends visit on the front porch: me at one end and my guests at the other. My trips to the grocery store are infrequent and my shopping list is organized based on the store layout so that I can get in and out. Massages a couple of times a month are a thing of the past and I skipped my six-month teeth cleaning at the dentist. Scientists tell us that we’re still in the first wave of the pandemic in the United States. In many parts of the country, it’s spreading more rapidly than before.
Many people have difficulty accepting that there’s a serious illness impacting the world. Some insist that it’s a conspiracy theory. Others insist that they are healthy enough to weather it. While I don’t know many people who have had COVID 19, I’ve talked to a few. One young man, age 24 and very athletic, told me that he couldn’t imagine being as sick as he was. He said he just wanted to die. There are also people I know who had loved ones who have died.
Yes, the world has changed. This is not the first devasting virus to impact humanity in the last two decades. There were SARS, MERS, and Ebola. Climate scientists tell us there are more diseases to come specifically because the global climate is changing and viruses are mutating. As much as we don’t want to, we need to embrace a new way of doing things.
I could say, “Woe is me! My life has changed! Give me back my old life!” But I can’t bring back the life I was leading in December 2019 any more than I can bring back the way life was in my childhood. However, while I can reminisce about what I liked about things in the past, I need to acknowledge that life is always changing. Life itself is the experience of growth, development, and change. Nothing stays the same. We have no control over the reality of life’s changes.
We know that the cycle of growth and change is part of the natural cycle. We see that cycle played out every year as spring grows into summer then fades into autumn and lies dormant in winter. It’s a cycle of change, or life, death, and rebirth. We live in that cycle. We can either embrace it or struggle to fight against the reality of change. But be sure of this: it’s a fight we’ll surely lose.
While I cherish the memories of what I’ve experienced, I do my best to live in the present. In the present, my world seems a bit smaller. Perhaps having a smaller world is an opportunity to live with greater depth. Perhaps it is an opportunity to cherish aspects of life I often take for granted. Yet I know this: Whatever the present is like for me, today’s present will pass into something new in the future. All things are passing.
Photo by Matt Henry photos on Foter.com / CC BY
