“We’re completely missing the point.”
That was the first thought to pop into my head a couple of months back when the first large snowstorm of the season was approaching my town in CT. But it wasn’t the pending potential inconvenience Mother Nature posed that had me shaking my head. It was the announcement from our local school systems that given the evolution of remote learning school would go on as scheduled.
In other words, the “snow day” would be no more.
What a mistake, I thought. How could anyone in charge of overseeing the development of our youth think that robbing them of unstructured play would be valuable?
But above all, I cringed at the lesson we were ultimately teaching our kids:
And that is, unequivocally, if you can, you should.
Because, you see, this issue with the snow day is not just relegated to children. It’s symbolic of the truth that the pandemic has unleashed another disease on our society, one that will leave people suffering for years and decades to come.
It’s a sickness that stems from no rest. No play. And a fervent, gnawing anxiety that we are never doing enough.
After all, everything about life right now requires maximum effort, a benchmark that is inched up daily in the fight to survive. Businesses have to do more to stay afloat, employees need to do more to maintain their jobs. Parents need to do more to ensure their kids don’t fall behind (which they inevitably will, setting those children up to have to do more down the road just to stay in line).
The result? A stressed-out, strung-out existence where people can’t sit still, can’t disconnect and that I personally believe will be far more toxic than anything fended off by a mask.
But here’s the thing: We’ve lamented the pandemic for taking our lives away. For robbing us of our freedoms.
Yet maybe its biggest lesson lies in reminding us that we are the only ones who can take those things back.
We do not need to jump on the do more bandwagon. We do not need to let vacation days pile up simply because there is nowhere to go. And we certainly do not need to put our kids in front of a screen when Mother Nature is beckoning for them to come out and get lost in her bluster.
We can, at any time, choose to live in a way that feels right to us.
The fact that “everyone else is doing it” – doing more – is likely, historically, the lamest excuse for following any trend, let alone one that is so self-destructive that it is like a drug, just leaving you wanting – wait for it – yes, more.
So I encourage you – and quite honestly, for your wellbeing, plead with you – to start reevaluating your decisions. To stop using the pandemic as justification for why you’re perpetually spinning your wheels to stay ahead.
I’m a work in progress on this one, but as I’ve written about in the past, this ordeal has forever changed me, and continues to do so on the daily.
So that is why in the world of “go hard or go home,” when the snow falls, you’ll find me deliberately — and defiantly — choosing home.
