Each morning I sit by my window regarding how the city slowly awakens. Today the city pulse seems to return slowly but I can sense something different about it; it seems calmer and more harmonious than a few months ago. Maybe I am imagining it as our household has become more serene during these weeks. Maybe I’m affected by what I’ve read about people around the planet pausing in their lives, waking up after years of “automatic living”. A kind of forced mindfulness for the more privileged on our planet who have been talking about mindfulness for years but not applied it consistently.
For more than six months, I have had the luxury to sit by this window, studying the daily morning, lunch and evening routine of people passing by outside. For more than six months, I haven’t been part of that stream of people caught in their daily stress. Waking the kids, prepare breakfast, making sure everyone is getting ready on time. Dropping off one kid at school, dropping off the second, go back home to fetch something that was forgotten before going to work. Then at work, take five minutes to read through droves of email to see if something important was added between 6 p.m. the evening before until now. Rush into the first meeting.
I remember these days when the work-life balance was a constant walk on a knifes edge. I now watch others dance this dance of tunnel vision from my safe perch at my window. To be sent home half a lifetime ago for fatigue was a blessing, an awakening of sorts. I realise that now but back then it only felt like a failure. After a few weeks, I could again see the details in the trees, smell the scents of nature. I began to have more deep talks with my children, family and friends. We could observe the small things together like shoes thrown up in trees, beautiful rocks, birds calling for each other in the skies. After such a revival it is impossible to return to the inanimate state my soul seemed to have been caught in for years.
Something has changed since the Coronavirus came to Sweden and the world. When I see through my window this morning, I can still see people go to and from work, taking lunch breaks and going home. But I can no longer see robots going on autopilot. My fellow humans have gained a glow they didn’t have before. And I’m no longer afraid to rejoin the world without losing my new perspective. But right now moving about in the world is restrained. Oh, the irony it’s caused by the same thing that woke my will.