Somewhere Between Trivial and Profound

I have struggled to write during lock-down.  My previous habit of getting something out every week has been unceremoniously shattered.  I don’t know where the days go.  Well, I do actually….things that I had outsourced in my BC life have now come right back into my (and my husband’s) remit.  Things like home-schooling three children, cleaning a house, keeping up with the washing, doing the ironing.  Even with a loose attention to detail, these tasks seem all-consuming when piled on top of running a business (which thankfully has been as busy as ever).  I realised how spoiled I am when I found myself scrubbing a toilet with no recollection of the last time I had performed such a chore. The phrase ‘first-world problems’ keeps coming to mind when I try and keep it in perspective.

I have also struggled to know what to write about.  Perhaps it’s the enormity of the situation we find ourselves in.  I haven’t wanted to write about triviality, and I have found it hard to write something that sounds suitably profound.

What follows is therefore a selection of the things that I have spent time thinking about over the past 8 weeks, things that fall between trivial and profound.

My family. 

I have spent a lot of time thinking about my family.  My sister had a baby last week – my parents’ twelfth grandchild.  I want to cuddle Teddy Winston Joseph, and I want to know when I will see my family again.  I have found it emotionally painful to accept that we might not see them this year.  Cayman has been our home for 14 years, and will probably always be our home, but my heart longs for my roots.

I love not rushing.

The most rushing I have done over the past two months is to the bar to pour a gin and tonic at the first acceptable strike of the clock.  No hurrying the kids out the door at 6.50am in the morning.  Thinking about going back to that panics me.  I would happily leave that behind forever.

Kids don’t need much.

I knew this but have been reminded.  We had two lock-down birthdays and one cancelled birthday party right before lock-down started.  The two lock-down birthdays (10th and 8th) were declared the best ever.  They got a few presents, but they had our presence.  We spent the evenings roasting marshmallows on a fire and watching the stars.  We saw satellites, an iridium flare (according to my husband), a barn-owl, bioluminescence in the canal – when you slow down, the world becomes visible.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

I have said this phrase a few times over the past two months when talking about different aspects of our financial lives.  Right now, in the middle of a global pandemic, you can apply it to everything because good enough is really great.  The floors don’t need to be spotless, the kids don’t have to get all their school work done, and food does not have to be gourmet. 

Will we go back to normal?

I hope we humans will use this as a wake-up call for all the parts of modern society that were broken.  But I don’t know.  I am not sure we collectively learn that quickly.  The onus lies on each of us as individuals to take personal responsibility to incorporate the wonderful things that have come out of this time back into the real world when we return to it.  I have everything crossed that we do that.

Georgie

georgie@libertywealth.ky