Time with friends is importent
The coronavirus, or as I like to call it, the ultimate party crasher, totally messed with our sense of time.
It seemed like time decided to take a vacation and left us all hanging.
When the pandemic first stormed in, it felt like time had hit the brakes, and we were all caught in a crazy crisis.
We were in survival mode, just trying to get through each day without losing our minds.
But you know what? Humans are pretty awesome. We didn't let time boss us around. We tapped into our inner time wizards and started playing tricks on it to cope with the new COVID-19 reality.
We created new routines, giving structure to our days. We became masters at juggling home life and working from home, even though it felt like one big blur. We even dared to plan ahead, even though the future was as clear as mud.
After countless lockdowns (especially here in the UK), I'm still blown away by how people got creative with the pandemic. Families and friends found incredible ways to stay connected from a distance.
But you know what's even more important than all that COVID creativity? It's perseverance, my friends.
Endurance, maintenance and tenacity – the ingredients that make up perseverance – are under-appreciated in times without crisis. But it's those that got us through the toughest times.
We surprised ourselves by adapting to the new normal like champs.
And now, as we look to the post-pandemic future, we gotta hold onto that perseverance.
Because creating a sustainable future depends on our ability to keep going, no matter what life throws at us.
Missed Opportunities
The pandemic taught us to appreciate, and even celebrate perseverance, not least the continuous daily work of all the heroic frontline workers (whose everyday work we’d taken for granted for too long).
It also provided us with a chance to reconsider what’s important in our lives and how we want to organise our societies in the future, many of us were made aware of what counts and what was missed the most.
Prominent amongst those things are the social relations that make us who we are - with family members, friends, neighbours and colleagues, even those we had all those unnecessary fights with during lockdown.
In the post-pandemic future, we should never again take them for granted, nor all the hugs, kisses and handshakes. We avoid doing that by appreciating the work that goes into maintaining these social relationships.
Apart from time for family and friends, we also yearned for other times - for travel and leisure, for example, we’d taken for granted the distinction between work and leisure, office and home time, and we’ll have to take time again to renegotiate these distinctions.
Whatever we come up with in the end, this new work-life balance will also have to stand the test of time – whether it can endure in the future and we in it.
Endurance and Exhaustion
During the pandemic, we all had to put on our thinking caps and get creative. But once we found our groove, we had to keep on truckin' and endure the challenges that came our way.
Whether it was those daily workouts that made us break a sweat, the weekly Zoom calls that kept us connected with our loved ones, or the never-ending homeschooling adventures, it was all about pushing through and showing our endurance. We were determined to make it through those dark winter days and fight off exhaustion and lockdown fatigue.
Endurance isn't just important during a pandemic; it's a big deal for society as a whole.
As cities change and evolve, we have to adapt our ways to fit the new social, economic, and political circumstances. But sometimes, we need to dig our heels in and fight to preserve the things we hold dear.
It takes real perseverance to keep that social club alive, even when it's struggling to find new members. And when they try to shut down your beloved community center, standing up and saying, "No way!" is a revolutionary act.
We're talking about preserving the very fabric of our urban infrastructure, like that awesome youth club or your favorite local park, even in the face of funding cuts. It's a true testament to our resilience and refusal to let others dictate the change.
Maintenance and Tenacity
This work of maintenance and tenacity is at the core of our societies. It might look less interesting than attempts at making a difference, but without it everything around us would collapse.
The end of this pandemic will not be a sharp cut. It will be gradual and, as humanity will have to pace itself, there will be more need for endurance. In the best case, the experiences of the pandemic will help us determine what this future should look like.
Although the pandemic will at some point be over, there are enough crises yet that demand our attention: economic, social, ecological and political ones as well as potential future pandemics.
The same sense of Endurance, maintenance, tenacity and perseverance will have to characterise our responses to those, too.
It is not enough to wait for a shortcut out of climate change or a cure-all for economic decline. A truly sustainable solution to these crises will have to be maintained in new everyday lives and routines. It will have to work with a different understanding of what human agency is all about.
Like during the pandemic, we not only have to establish new ideas, but make them work in the long run.
Thank you for reading "The Ingredients That Make Up Perseverance".
I really hope that you enjoyed it and take action on the advice given in this article.
I wish you good luck and I hope its contents have been a good help to you.
