Have you noticed something in the last few weeks?
There’s a general “slow down, go slower, even slower than that” feeling with the population in #yeg.
This is great news! We need to do this regularly. But with all the events of the last many couple of years we haven’t been able to do it. There has always been one thing or another to shatter our wind down time. And don’t kid yourself. That wind down time IS ours and it has been repeatedly stolen from us: a rumour here, a juicy bit of gossip there, health alerts, weather alerts, tragedies next door, tragedies across the world, conspiracies, wars.
So what happened?
My opinion? Well, I’m glad you asked! 🙂
We learned to set a boundary around our beliefs, our values. For perhaps the first time in our lives, we (collectively) pushed back against the media, the people we meet everyday, our friends, and even our families.
We said, “Know what? I can tackle this better AFTER I’ve taken time for me. And AFTER I’ve had time to process and evaluate what I’m hearing/seeing/feeling. For right now the world can jolly well bugger off.”
We haven’t become insensitive to events outside of our control. We have realized that we need to unplug, withdraw, put up a temporary boundary before we come to terms with these events. There’s a huge difference. It’s called, “I won’t serve water from an empty cup.”
There will ALWAYS be something trying to steal our attention.
“And every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling, “This is important! And this is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And this! And this!” And each day, it’s up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart and say, “No. This is what’s important.”
― Iain Thomas
And I think that’s just fine.
Because you know why? People are smiling more!