No Regrets
The five week period that I was closed was an interesting time of living and watching life out of the norm, with every day being the same but every day being different due to lack of control of our own world. Pair that with the mental unrest of not feeling in control, knowing tomorrow probably wasn’t going to be a whole lot different. I thought to myself this must be what it feels like when you go to prison and are cut off from the world. You know you’re not in control but you really don’t know who is.
These times try your religious foundation. Many of us want to keep close to our hearts that God is in control and protecting us, but when really put to the test, doubt seems to creep into some little crack in our persona. I feel the pandemic has really tried our personal beliefs on what we feel is important in our lives and, for many of us, we have restructured ourselves to a less materialistic existence. Rather than buy, buy, buy, it morphed, out of necessity, to build, make, create! Staying home became less like being grounded and more like let’s recreate family life. Popcorn sales had to skyrocket with all the binging of movies.
While watching the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, I reflected back on the year 1983! Three major events happened that year… Aids… Live Aid Concert… and I graduated from orthodontic school. I was trying to open my office and the world was scared to death with the threat of Aids. Because when it first came out it was a death sentence, with no known cure. Covid-19 isn’t quite like Aids, unless you have a predisposition or age factor, but it has made us stop and think about dying.
Usually - and for good mental reasons - we are too busy to think of leaving the earth and our loved ones. The pandemic has shown us how vulnerable this body of ours is, but it has also shown us how compensatory our organs are to bring some back from the brink of death. Many of us feel all we have to do is take our vitamins, eat fairly well, and get a flu shot and - bam! - we are teflonized and nothing will stick to this body of ours! That theory hasn’t held up well for some. And for others… they don’t wear masks, don’t eat well, don’t exercise, smoke like a chimney, and will live to 101 years of age!
I think there is a genuine feeling that we are all given a finite time on this earth and that we truly need to live each day as if it were our last. At our family Easter Zoom dinner this year, I ended my annual motivation speech about resurrection. (The crowd was much more depressed than usual due to separation.) But I told them that they should live life with the fewest regrets.
Take an assessment of your strengths and weaknesses and go out and make a difference in the world, one person at a time. Take the time to do something for someone less fortunate… a shut-in… someone having trouble coping with the pandemic… there are a myriad of opportunities.
As we begin to come out of the quarantine, there is a part of me that will be sad. Yes, we are going back to the rat race, the grind, the normality that for many years we have called life! Yet we are leaving a special time that many hope will never come again. I agree it has been hard for many, but it has made us slow down and appreciate life and all those things we have forever taken for granted… even things as simple as toilet paper!
It’s strange - I’ve watched it as the patients have returned and in talking to friends - the pandemic has brought many families and individuals closer together. Instead of living life through sports figures on TV and thinking of the grandeur of more material things that we can accumulate, people have been focused on their own families rather than living vicariously through others.
Isn’t it interesting that we actually can be happy with the simple things in life and the closeness of a good friend or a coffee filter lined mask?
So I ask you, let’s not go back completely to our old selves. As we return to daily life and more freedoms, let’s listen to our hearts a bit more… in a way this time of uncertainty has forced us to do.
Do something nice for someone. It may only take a moment to do it, but it may be the moment that someone truly needs.
Good thoughts… Good works… Good deeds… No regrets!
- Dr. P