2020 Is a Gift, Will You Unwrap It?

Life as we know it is over! The economy is toast! Everyone is going to die! The market will never come back! We’re all going to lose our jobs! This is worse than the GFC this is worse than the Great Depression, this is worse than……………..

Are just some of the headlines and social media posts all breathlessly racing one another to the bottom of mass hysteria as COVID19 spreads across the globe.

Dammit I really didn’t want to be another voice adding to the COVID19 cacophony, but here goes.

By all accounts 2020 has been an unusual year and we’re only 3 months into it. What was tipped to be another strong year of economic growth worldwide suddenly isn’t and we’re all asking how, why and how long, when we’re not battling our neighbours over toilet paper at the local supermarket.

As the panic crescendos, it’s tempting to shut down, tune out and wait until the calendar switches over to 2021 and hopefully better times. I confess I’m guilty of wanting to do this. I’ve previously used variations of this method to survive difficult times in my life so it’s tempting to apply it now.

Except life doesn’t work that way. Unlike the fire drills we perform at our schools and offices, there’s rarely an ‘all clear’ sounded letting everyone know that it’s ok to get back to it. The noise dies down, business picks up, and things return to normal, and you suddenly realise you’ve squandered the time you had to do……….

A LinkedIn post from Tucker Max at Scribe Media last week reminded me of this. He pointed out that both Shakespeare and Newton produced some of their most important work during periods of pandemic-related quarantine in the 1600s.

What, I never knew that.

Yeah, me neither, and yet two of history’s greatest contributors to literature and STEM managed to put aside the fear and paranoia of a pandemic and be productive. Even more incredible when you consider that pandemics back then were even more frightening than they are today as a healthy dose of quack spirituality and healthcare accompanied them. Imagine a monk draining blood from you in hopes that you recovered or a priest condemning you for getting sick in the first place.

I’m not trying to make light of the current situation with COVID19. There are people getting sick and dying, there are people losing their jobs. This isn’t something to fool around with.

But as you do your part (staying at home), you’re probably going a bit stir-crazy wondering what to do with yourself. And here is where 2020 and the current quarantine is such a gift, you’ve been gifted time, our most precious perishable resource.

We all have long lists of things we’d like to do if only we had the time. Oh, we’ll get to it someday, maybe retirement. But these things tend to be postponed indefinitely because of the busy melee of everyday life. Commuting, working, running kids around, shopping, catching up with friends and so on.

‘I don’t have time’ is our preferred get out of jail free card whenever we ask ourselves if we should write that book, start that business, take that class, pass that certification, read that book, clean out that junk drawer in the kitchen that’s been driving us crazy…………………

Guess what? You now have time! The current ‘stay at home’ situation necessitated by COVID19 means you can start doing these things.

You have a choice. You can add to banal cacophony of increasingly panicky and resigned to their fate posts on social media or you can accept the gift that 2020 has given you, time. Time to learn and grow. Time to produce. Time to become the improved version of yourself you want to be.

The people who will change the world this decade aren’t stressing and complaining on social media, they’re busy taking advantage of this precious gift of time that 2020 has given them. Because they know that like all things, good and bad, the current gift of time we all have will end. The pandemic will end; life will go back to normal. Before you know it you’ll be too busy to…….

You have a choice. You can spend these next few weeks (or however long this lasts) on unproductive activities (social media, streaming entertainment) or you can start tackling that list of things you want to do now that you’ve been given the time.

Which will you choose?

Thanks for reading; I’m off to the supermarket for more toilet paper.