It's Time For A Paradigm Change

I don't know where the person in my network found it, so I unfortunately can't give credit to the original person (a quick Tineye search shows https://www.reddit.com/r/wholesomememes/comments/fuwzyl/stay_healthy_and_safe/ as the earliest posting, so that's the best I have), but I find this to be one of the most truly inspiring memes out there.

Modern society has been obsessed with "the hustle" in recent years. Like, if you're not spending every waking moment "being productive," you're a failure and deserve to be on the brink of poverty.

It seems to me that this pandemic is the world's way of saying "ya'll need to slow the fuck down and embrace life and what you have right now." Any athlete will tell you that rest is just as important as -- if not more important than -- activity/practice/work.

And yeah, the whole "you never lacked time, you lacked discipline" part of the original of this is privileged as hell, because it assumes "you" don't have any other obligations that came from this. It assumes that you got forced into your home and...that's about it. So now that you don't have an hour-each-way commute, you have at least two hours a day to do something to better yourself, to start a new business, or whatever. Right?

But many of us have kids. We have family members who are at high risk and need our help -- or they need help, but circumstances keep us from helping. We got sick. We had to deal with the stress of getting tossed head first into the remote working deep end. We have to deal with staring at the same four walls every day, joined at the hip with the same couple of people all day, every day, with very little -- if any -- space to ourselves for just a little bit.

Many of us also already have skills and knowledge we're putting to use, but not for a side hustle. Rather, we're doing it to help our communities. Seamsters are designing masks for general and medical use to fill in the shortage gaps. Younger, healthier, more medically resilient people are running errands for those at higher risk, or helping feed kids who now face food insecurity, because they depended on the free lunch programs. Gardeners are getting ready to grow extra food. 3D printers are finding ways to print a variety of things that are in short supply.

And many of us are risking our lives every day, not just in medical facilities, but also in grocery stores, restaurants, and other essential businesses -- most of whom have been woefully underpaid and undervalued before all this happened.

So you know what? We're already learning new skills (because that's what humans do; we don't need to specifically set out to learn things in times like this). We're learning how to cope with the stresses of what's going on. We're learning how to handle social distancing and isolation. We're learning that it's okay to rest and slow down -- because our lives literally depend on it, especially right now. We as a society are (I hope) learning just how vital and valuable those grocery store workers and "burger flippers" really are and that they deserve more than minimum wage and no benefits. We're (hopefully) learning just how social and interdependent we humans really are, and how much we actually need community. We're learning the hard way just how broken our systems really are.

It's okay to say "this is enough." Enough is perfectly acceptable, and more isn't always better (especially right now). "Enough" is enough.