2 minute read
Many Americans are feeling cooped up by four months of COVID-19 pandemic. As someone who has been strictly quarantined since mid-March, I get it. Much digital ink has been spilled on social media about how folks miss eating out, going dancing, seeing new movies, and watching live sports. Personally, I love watching pro sports, and eagerly look forward to the NBA’s return in 11 days, but not for a moment have I felt “deprived” by their absence. That’s my general vibe on most things like movies, eating out, or even shopping. They’re nice, yeah, but growing up without much financial means we’d usually eat in on Saturday night, rent a VHS instead of go out to a theater, or smuggle in our own pop corn and drinks on the rare occasions that we did. Thriftiness was just the way we lived. I suppose that’s why I’m already used to it and in some ways this whole pandemic has felt like an unexpected return to normalcy. Those things still feel like luxuries rather than fixtures of my way of life. At the risk out sounding like I belong in a nostalgic Norman Rockwell painting, it really does seem like this summer has a throwback feel to it. When I drive around I see more boys playing catch with their dads, more girls skipping rope with their moms, more middle-schoolers shooting hoops with their friends in the park, and more families going on walks together. The other day I even saw two kids climbing a tree without parental supervision or helmets. I’ll bet these youngsters will look back on all this as the good ol’ days. All this got me wondering, what unique opportunities does this pandemic present for pivoting our way of life toward a more healthy lifestyle if only we’d stop complaining and instead seize the day?
