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Back in the lazy summer days of my youth, I used to watch a lot of afternoon TV. Things like People in Conflict, Magistrate's Court and Paul Bernard, Psychiatrist (no relation to Paul Bernardo!) Part of the appeal of those shows was how people's problems would all be solved within a one-hour or even a half-hour time period. But as we all know, real life doesn't work that way.
I also seem to recall an old book with a title something like: I'm running away from home but I'm not allowed to cross the street by myself. It could almost have been written within a pandemic context although there, the same principle could apply to adults just as much as to kids.
If you're feeling ticked off at the people you live with - and I wonder who ISN'T, at least occasionally, during a lockdown - you come to realize that many of the tactics and strategies you once relied on to restore your equilibrium and equanimity are simply no longer available to you.
No longer can you spend hours brooding and reflecting in your favourite coffee shop over a super-mega-cappuccino and maybe a little comfort food. No longer can you wander through open hallways of soul-restoring national art and replica Rideau chapels with Tallis emerging in multi-part harmony from all the speakers. And of course, solo travel to far-flung places - the chance to poke about and get the lay of land in a place where you know no one and no one knows you - has been flung far out the window as trains and boats and planes have curtailed their schedules.
As long as your living conditions are not too cramped, there is still the option to get a little privacy and look within yourself - meditation, reading, journalling, writing songs or poetry or prose or painting or crafting or baking: in short, reinventing yourself by creating in whatever way you like to create.
It's a start, and it will have to do for now.
I also seem to recall an old book with a title something like: I'm running away from home but I'm not allowed to cross the street by myself. It could almost have been written within a pandemic context although there, the same principle could apply to adults just as much as to kids.
If you're feeling ticked off at the people you live with - and I wonder who ISN'T, at least occasionally, during a lockdown - you come to realize that many of the tactics and strategies you once relied on to restore your equilibrium and equanimity are simply no longer available to you.
No longer can you spend hours brooding and reflecting in your favourite coffee shop over a super-mega-cappuccino and maybe a little comfort food. No longer can you wander through open hallways of soul-restoring national art and replica Rideau chapels with Tallis emerging in multi-part harmony from all the speakers. And of course, solo travel to far-flung places - the chance to poke about and get the lay of land in a place where you know no one and no one knows you - has been flung far out the window as trains and boats and planes have curtailed their schedules.
As long as your living conditions are not too cramped, there is still the option to get a little privacy and look within yourself - meditation, reading, journalling, writing songs or poetry or prose or painting or crafting or baking: in short, reinventing yourself by creating in whatever way you like to create.
It's a start, and it will have to do for now.
