What have these 6 weeks at home changed in you already?

If you go to any social media channel right now, there are countless live sessions about “how society will look when quarantine ends”: economists, psychologists, sociologists, “digital influencers”… you name it. Everyone wants to have a best guess on how long it will take to have the economy back on track, how education will be changed, how will relationships between countries differ.

There are so many questions, and so many people guessing, that it can easily lead many of us to anxiety and frustration. And the honest truth is that nobody actually knows, for sure, what lies ahead of us. If you think 4 months back to your New Year’s Eve hopes for 2020, did you imagine you would be wiping supermarket items, or wearing medical masks to go out, or that you would be celebrating birthdays online? Probably not. Yet here we are, doing all those things and so many others that would have been considered unbelievable just a few months ago. The year 2020 has been the “plan to be surprised” year, for sure.

So, instead of getting anxious about the uncertain, what we can do now is to evaluate how these past 6 weeks have changed our lives, deep inside. Our relationships with our families, our coworkers, and as members of the broader society. I have been trying to do this exercise, and I am happy to say that a smile often comes to my face. Of course, I am, like everyone else, overwhelmed with the multiple tasks I have. And yes, 95% of the time it is exhausting, and I can only hope for this to be over soon. But at the same time, some great moments that were put aside before, do happen.

During the holiday, playing board games and cards for hours with my family was one of the best moments I had this year. When you have 4 kids and step kids in a range between 10 to 28 years old, it is not usual to have everyone together at home on a holiday, unless it is a celebration. There is always one out at a friend’s house, at a party, at the beach… The question “why don’t you stay home playing board games and cards with mom and dad on a sunny holiday” is absolutely outrageous in normal days. But yes, we did that. And we had a blast! Time flew by with all of us laughing so hard, having so much fun. The interesting thing is that it also brought me great memories of playing those exact same games when I was a kid with my sisters, cousins, and friends. And how grateful I am to have lived that, back then and now. So how about we make these kinds of memories our lasting memories in 20 years from now?

We might also like to consider which are the rituals we have established during the past 6 weeks that we would like to continue after quarantine ends with our families, our teams, our society. That is something that is totally up to us.

Cris Conforto
Director of Advancement