The Luxury Of Forced Shutdown

by sacha jones

How Taking time off Opens Your Eyes To The Magic Of Everyday Occurences

It's like a long-overdue clean-up; the forced shutdown due to coronavirus refreshes priorities, polishes values, and places desires and needs in order of importance.

Two opposites stand out,

1. We realize the things we can live without 2. We realize the good things in life we take for granted that we can't live without Everything in the middle fades out, doesn't matter.

What have you realized you can live without?

For me, it's being busy for busyness' sake. I've come to realize nothing really matters except what really matters.

What do you take for granted that you can't live without?

Choice of experience. Right now, walking out and choosing from an array of places to go to and people to interact with, all feels like a luxury.

Maybe it is?

Maybe stripping down to nothing but essentials makes you realize the luxury of choice you've come to see as ''normal'' every day.

When this is all in the past and we re-adjust to normal life, we'll most likely forget and feel entitled to benefit from the luxury of choice again. But let this be a yardstick to remember that this current industrialised-interconnected-buffet-of-choice lifestyle is a luxury. People, like you, wake up all over the world and bend over backwards so we can live this way.

You never really know what you have until it's become unavailable. You don't know how hard that person works and what she/he has to do to deliver this to you. Or how much stress and struggle it takes to get that (x) for you. most importantly, you probably don't know how much your life isn't the same without it.

Let this moment of forced shutdown open your eyes on the luxury of everyday experiences so that your everyday experiences become a luxury.

when things start opening back again, tell the people that work there you appreciate their existence. That just might be enough for them to keep on through these tough times.