Endless time at home with yourself, the world outside as we know has stopped. We asked our friends the question “What do we learn from this?”
It was a bit difficult to start this article about the COVID-19 period because there is actually nothing positive about it. Many people dying, hospitals reaching their limit (not just to mention what people who work in hospitals have to go through day by day). A lot of people losing their job, many others unsure about their future.
During these past weeks (actually even months) under complete lockdown, we were not allowed to leave the house except for super necessary stuff. The whole day-to-day life has been moved online – working from home, meeting friends online, and lots of time for yourself (and maybe even a bit too much time for yourself).
It is surely no easy time for anyone, and if we want to believe it or not, it is not over. People speak about going back to “normality”. And this is really often accompanied by quotation marks.
Because it won’t be the same normal as before. Currently, we cannot picture how this back to “normal” will be like, but maybe we will be able to redefine our lives a bit.
At least it seems like a good chance for it.
With this article, we want to try to find something good, something that we should take as a lesson and adapt when going back to “normal.” We spoke to a lot of our friends, and we’ve figured that everyone has a takeaway from life.
Below some snippets of the conversations with our friends:
“I’ve learnt that not every second has to be productive. We’ve been doing a jigsaw and I spent a long time feeling it was futile, and nothing was really gained or learned from a jigsaw. Now I realize it was just for the satisfaction of finding where a small piece fits. I’ve also learnt that when you can only go outside for one hour a day (sorry!!) there is so much more to take in. The birds are loud and my boyfriend has been teaching me to recognize each tune for any type of bird. There are lots of views you’ve never seen before if you look up and properly around, tracks you’ve not run, smells that are new etc. No phone no technology but a very intense period outside makes you realize how vibrant it is”.
Zoe, Yorkshire, United Kingdom
“In our everyday life, in which we often simply rush from appointment to appointment, we often do not have the possibility to recognize in time if we are not doing well with something. We constantly distract ourselves and only recognize problems when it is too late and everything collapses. Now I have realized how much more relaxing it is to spend an evening alone and read, cook a new dish or paint, which I will continue to do in the time after Corona.”
Freya, Milan, Italy
“There’s only one race for human: human-race.”
Ranny, Lisbon, Portugal
“I’ve learnt that having fresh fruit and veg delivered helps both me and my local community. The small businesses want to make the world a better place, but they need support to be able to. (I also learnt that making homemade smoothies is fun and delicious! ;-).”
Caroline, Milan, Italy
“I’ve learnt how it is important to nourish my self-love by cultivating what makes me feel alive and fit to my authentic self: spending time in contact with nature; supporting people in needs and being able to ask for help (human connections – despite social distancing – are powerfully healing); giving space to my creative side by painting and keep learning how to listen and try to manage emotions.”
Serena, Perugia, Italy
“I’ve learnt that the home office should be normal even after Corona times. Up to now, the home office was only tolerated in exceptional situations and was often dismissed with the argument that nobody works consistently at home. The opposite has become true. The effectiveness has increased due to free time management (already by eliminating the need to travel to work) and yet successful teamwork through video conferences or chats. My company, with 50 locations worldwide, will largely operate without business trips in the future, as it has been shown how well cooperation via video conferencing works. This saves on travel costs, organization, valuable time and prevents jet lag that can cause illness.”
Susanne, Munich, Germany
“I’ve learnt to be more responsible with my consumption because you realize that you can get along with much less and be happy”.
Robin, Milan, Italy
“I’ve learnt that nothing has a value other than health, family, friend and love. For me in everyday life, sometimes I used to have negative thoughts, get stressed over nothing and created problems out of silly stuff but this whole situation showed me how important living life to its fullest is! You know the saying “there’s no rainbow without a rain”! After we will start going back to normal, I think we all should first take care of our mother nature and not take it for granted and of course, enjoy our lives and spread love and joy all around.”
Anamaria, Tbilisi, Georgia
Learning is the main point, as it always is in life, whether that be a new hobby, a new skill or something about yourself. I mean we had to sit with ourselves for a good couple of months, I learnt a lot about myself, or rather what I want or what I don’t want. Also being able to avoid negative influence, and not feeling the obligation to do things that you might not want to do. This helps you not just to focus on yourself, but also to be more confident in yourself”.
Emily, Genova, Italy
(During that time of Corona, Emily has also started to plant her own veggies and we asked her to write for us “How to go (almost) zero waste in the Kitchen”. Go and check it out).
“I’ve learnt that many things that seemed so important before, have become unimportant. We never know what can happen in life that we cannot control… We should give our life and our time more purpose. And if we have the possibility to avoid something like this happening, we would grab the chance and do it. The collective good is more important than our own silly things. This is something we tend to forget way too often”.
Fanny, Milan, Italy
(I also wrote this article ;-))
We would like to stop here and just continue the conversation: what did YOU learn? Let us know in the comments below.
