Do Something Crazy

Two of us went kayaking today just outside Boston, in November, under cloudy skies. We unloaded the kayaks, trudged down to the river over a light covering of snow, and slid them into the water. It felt crazy and irresponsible, given the snowfall this weekend, the sub-freezing overnight temperatures, and the likelihood of hypothermia if we fell in, but it was also a lot of fun. Alone on the river, save for the geese, ducks, and occasional swan, we floated past brown, snow-dusted woods and fields. We rode the currents under bridges, floated serenely through broad, shallow ponds, ducked under low-hanging branches, and encountered a beaver and a few grey herons. Three hours later, our journey ended just as the skies opened up and started pelting river and road alike with a cold November rain, right under the wire, more lucky than smart. Going kayaking today was not an obvious choice, but it was also medicine for the soul during troubled times, carving out an oasis of calm away from the cacophony and stress of our lives.

We need to step outside our normal routines and do something crazy once in a while. While taking precautions to ensure that we don’t harm ourselves or others, we should invite our imaginations to come up with creative ways of combatting cabin fever and build our resilience for the days to come. We can do that thing we’ve wanted to do but never thought we would. We can challenge ourselves to learn new things and grow our skills, to explore areas of interest that we never had time for before.

This is a time of unprecedented challenges. The pandemic has impacted us all, regardless of the infection rate in our neighborhood. People are getting sick and dying at rates unheard of in a century, travel and commerce have virtually shut down, we feel financial stress and insecurity, and the seams that hold our society together are straining under the pressure. Instead of banding together and regarding the virus as a common threat, we treat each other as the enemy and argue over whether the virus is really a problem. We hunker down in our echo chambers and are slowly losing our collective minds.

We can help ourselves by going outside our normal bounds, drawing outside the lines and taking some chances that we’ve been reluctant to take before. If we’ve always wanted to get a dog, but something has held us back, now might be the time to take the plunge and get one. If we’ve been unhappy in our jobs and now find ourselves at home, this might be the time to explore a new career. If we’ve always dreamed of running a marathon, we could start to train today. While we need to be responsible, stay healthy, and keep food on the table, we can also benefit by following our imaginations, even as they lead us into a small boat on an ice-cold river through the snowy woods.