Heroes Not Zombies

The sky above where I live often used to look like this.

It doesn’t any more.

It hasn’t looked like this since March, and, frankly, it feels like it might never look like this again.

I guess you’d call this a busy sky, and even though trains and cars and boats don’t leave visible trails like these, the same phenomenon must be repeating itself everywhere. We humans are just not moving around the planet this year in anything like the numbers of the previous few years. For obvious reasons of course – COVID!

Here in France we are in “Confinement” 2.0 – totally locked down with only essential shops and services open, the need to print out an “attestation” if you go out at all – that’s a sort of permission slip where you have to say what you are going out for (there are only a limited number of legitimate excuses), and if you’re going out for exercise you can only be out for a maximum of an hour and not further than one kilometre from home.

Well, I’m retired, so I don’t commute any more – which is one of THE biggest differences in my life. But many people are either now working from home, or have been laid off, temporarily hopefully, but many businesses are folding up and those jobs will be gone for good. I have travelled quite a lot since I retired – mainly by car, with trips to explore different parts of France and Spain – but some flights back to Scotland to see family and had plans to attend a conference in Toronto last week but that was cancelled months ago.

On the plus side I suppose it’s good for the planet that there are less planes flying here and there, and several people I’ve spoken to find the opportunities to work from home at least part of the time a real bonus. I’m not sure many people regret not having to spend so many hours commuting each week.

But the main thing I thought about when I looked at this photo today was how this pandemic is doing more than give many of us an opportunity to reassess how we are living our lives….it’s forcing us to. By applying the brakes to what we came to know as normal we have the time and space now to ask “how do I really want to live?” – and/or “how can I live now in the light of this 2020 year of pandemic?

What about you?

How is commuting less and travelling less affecting your life? And, once this pandemic is over, do you think you’ll choose to re-establish those old patterns if you can? Or have your values and priorities changed now?

Have you already started to live differently?