My Essentials

    

“Don’t let your happiness depend on something you may lose.” ~ C.S. Lewis

 Nairobi is back in lock down and curfew has been extended. Right before the Easter holiday. Sigh. One of the ‘pandemic vocabularies’ that’s been widely used since we got into this conundrum is “essential” - essential services, essential travel, essential gatherings, etc. Essential simply means ‘of the ultimate importance, indispensable, necessary’. Something you cannot do without. And what we thought was essential before March last year has been redefined and reclassified.

I went into a nostalgic audit this past week and looked at my life then as contrasted with my life now. My focus was on what things did I do or not do without then and that I’ve been forced to do without since. After listing a few, I then asked if I had a misplaced dependency on any of them. Interesting answers I got! Some were purely just for entertainment and an effort to pacify the small portion of me that is extroverted. Others were seriously essential to my mental, physical and spiritual health. So, how did I cope when those “previous essentials” were suddenly turned into non-essentials, non-existents?

Initially, there was grief, withdrawal, anger, sadness. My idols had fallen. Eventually this turned into a dull ache and occasional feelings of longing. In the meantime though, my mind was determining what the absolute necessities were and finding ways to satisfy those in different ways. Physical meetings turned virtual, in person entertainment went online, new hobbies learned and practiced, a new normal was born. Some of the old ways of doing things will never really die. They are likely to come back when the environment is conducive. Others died an instant death and will never come back, and possibly because we were forced to innovate new and more effective methods of doing things. But my point is the human being is resilient, malleable, adaptable, and innovative. Like water, we can find a way around a bolder in our path and keep moving.

So, what is essential? What were your idols? That exercise moved me to the next level – spring cleaning. What attachments do I have that no longer serve me: physical, emotional, spiritual? Are there things I need to de-clutter and detach from: clothes, books, apps, email subscriptions, toys, people, connections, habits, thoughts, etc? Do I need to learn new habits and practices that will not only carry me through this season but also carry me through the seasons to come? (Because this too shall pass, make no mistake about it!) Am I still grieving loss or have I found the strength to pick up my pieces and begin to take steps to rise again? Loss is never easy at the onset but it can provide us with amazing opportunities to move forward, if we will only look up, dust ourselves off and prepare to see them.

“Despondency is not a state of humility; on the contrary, it is the vexation and despair of a cowardly pride- -nothing is worse; whether we stumble or whether we fall, we must only think of rising again and going on in our course.” - Francois Fenelon

“It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get up.” - Vince Lombardi

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