Things I have learned - and things I have learned to appreciate during Quarantine.

So my little one (3) and will get out of quarantine tomorrow. While on Day 1 I had literally no idea how to make it with her through those many, long days, the actual experience of it turned out to be more inspiring than I had anticipated.

There are a few things that quarantine life has taught me that I'd like to share. This is admittedly quite personal, but all learnings are also very much tied to my professional life, so I hope it is OK to use this platform. I must also say in advance that being able to have this learning experience was only possible because I was very lucky (and fully vaccinated) to experience only mild symptoms. I am very grateful for that.

So here they come:

1.It can be such a pleasure to embrace inefficiencies.?

Just before catching COVID I remember watching a waitress, who seemed to never bring more than just one thing to our table at once. She’d come to bring salt and pepper if we had asked for it, but not the extra bottle of water. She’d come again to bring the bottle of water next time round, but not the dessert menu, and so on. As a full-time working Mom being used to an insane level of efficiency, someone being able to work like that astonished me. During quarantine, I finally got to try it out and it was absolutely amazing! Intentionally never doing more than one, but one, thing at the time was - relieving. When you are able to lose track of time entirely because you have the whole day, every day to waste, you give every single activity - as unimportant as it may have been to you in the past - a special place. A little more of that during normal work life might be healthy, I have come to think.

2. The beautiful state of zero responsibilities?

I'm never not working when I am on vacation. Never. I always check e-mail, answer some of them, make sure to know whats going on at work. Not this time. For ten strangely magical days it was really just the two of us on our own planet. I managed to free myself entirely from the pressure of work. I did not turn on my laptop during the day. If we had to do this, I wanted to be there for her and only her. The result was the most beautiful “lightweightness” I’ve experienced in a while. If you cannot even do grocery shopping yourself, if you do not allow yourself to work, all we did was play, draw, dance, jump, sing, read - and when we were done, we would start all over again.?Priorities reloaded.

3. There’s no right time

Starting to bake cookies at 7.30am in the morning? Eating icecream at lunchtime? Playing hide and seek in the garden at 8pm? Yes, yes and yes. When there are no responsibilities waiting for you, when there are no appointments to be on time for, no Kindergarden that you have to rush to, no playdates, no swim class, no tennis, no nothing, we just went with the flow. We invented our very own flow. That was probably the closest i’ve ever come to a Pippi Longstocking life.?It was beautiful.

4. Enjoy the little moments?

When from the outside all days appear to be the same, it is even more than ever the small things that make your day! When the brioche we made looked and tasted just perfect, when we saved a ladybug from drowning in the pool, when the little one did her first dive in the bathtub and was sooo proud, when we turned up the music and had so much fun dancing, when we ventured out to places in the garden we’d never paid attention to before…Tiny moments bringing on big smiles.

5. No complaints

My little one did not complain a single time in those ten days in which she couldn't see her friends, go to the playground, go to swim class or Kindergarden. Not once did she say anything negative about the day, not once did she ask me when this whole thing was over. She just took every day as it came. So I felt if she didn't, I wouldn't have the right to complain. So I learned not to. We just tried made the best out of every single day.

6. Children's infinite imagination!?

When you’ve been up since 7 am and it’s 7 pm - time to go to bed - and your little bundle of infinite fantasy still manages to come up with new games to play, new things to built, new stories to tell... During those ten days she kept surprising me with her endless pool of ideas of what to do! There's a famous quote by Albert Einstein who has once said:

"Fantasy is more important than knowledge because knowledge is limited."

How right he was.

So here we were at the end of quarantine life. As rosy as the above my sound of course I should also mention that it was also an exhausting experience. But still - I have learned so much. I had time to reflect. I calmed down. So as ironic as this may sound, as much as we've been counting days, longing to go out there again, I feel almost sad, almost a little frightened to leave our very own world…

Back to the sounds of life, back to cars, back to supermarkets, back to paying bills, back to having stuff to do, back to the every day of things when things seemed to be on hold for us two, for ten days. Cannot think of a better person to have spent them with.

Thank you, Lou.