Has everyone gone stir crazy yet? I’m sure you’ve never had to stay all cooped up in your house this long before; I know I haven’t.
At times I just want to go out and go anywhere, but I know better. But then I start to think about the people who don’t really have the choice to stay home during this pandemic. The essential people. The people who are risking their lives to help the ones in need and keeping our world going. I wonder what is going on through their heads; in fact, I wonder what is going through my Dad’s head because he still needs to go out everyday.
This has been a very abnormal few weeks for him. He’s gone from a busy 9-5 job facilitating his employees and building medical equipment, to having very few people, in hopes to keep them all safe, and disinfecting everything. He used to hire the cleaning crew, but now he is the cleaning crew.
The only normalcy in his life is coming home and seeing his family everyday. That’s what keeps him going, along with his faith in God and Tom Brady’s quote, “Under stress, I’m the best”.
However he feels sad for his kids because with one being in their senior year of high school and another trying to finish up college, they won’t be able to have all of those fun and memorable times with friends, including those celebratory moments all young adults should experience.
“I’m sad that my kids can’t have a normal life and good young adult memories anymore, ” my father said.
The only thing that came to mind for him that was at all similar to this pandemic was the New England Blizzard of 1978 and an ice storm in the early 70’s.
“I remember having no power for two weeks. My family and I had to sleep and live in the living room,” he said. “Our life had been flipped upside down.”
Yet even though his life went back to normal after those storms, he’s not too confident on getting the same results with this situation. He feels that due to the fake news from the media along with the constant hype, that “people will be so afraid the sky is going to fall, that our economy will fall as well. And if there are no jobs, the next issue will be starvation”.
He said that this might not be something I want to hear, but it has to be said. He finds the younger generation to not be as creative or have a strong inventive skill set that he finds the older generation only had.
They had the great outdoors to build forts and we have Tik Tok. If not being able to leave our homes is bad, could we do it without our phones? Think about it.
He just finds survival may not be as easy to the younger generation as it can be for the older ones. However if any good change can come out of this, he hopes that all this “boredom” will be a wake up call for all of us. We will be more inventive, we will design more and dream more. We will even go outside and get our hands dirty. That’s all he wants.
I want to know what you guys think!
I’m sure what my father said could be striking to some of you, but think about it. What would we do if we didn’t have our phones? I’m sure they have been a big help during our social distancing and quarantining, but what if we didn’t have them? So much of our life is online-based right now; school, work, keeping our sanity by watching Netflix, even ordering food. What would we do?
The bright side is that people have been more creative and finding anything they can do to keep busy. Whether that be cleaning your house or getting back into painting, it’s all great and stimulating our brains too and we need to keep it up.
Along with keeping our brains stimulated, we need to remember the people who are doing everything they can to help keep our world going in these trying times. To the hospital workers, Firefighters, Police Officers, Military workers, grocery workers, any other essential workers out there right now, and the many others I’m probably forgetting. We need to be appreciative of them because we need them right now. So do your part and stay home for them no matter how badly you want to just leave your house. Continue to stay strong! 🙂
Committing to the Commute 