Should We Rush Back to “Normal”?

Like many people, we are looking forward to the day when we can get our lives back to normal. The day when we don’t have to be stuck in our houses all day, behind a computer, zoom calls, and having to do other things that were not part of our normal, everyday life. But during this forced quarantine, it is a good time for us to stop and consider, 

“Was our ‘normal’ life working?”

“Did we like the direction we were heading?”

“Did we like the way we were spending our time and money?”

Socrates once wrote, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Many of us have the privilege, an opportunity, to consider how our lives were before this disruption. This time may be a gift for us to examine our lives and make some adjustments. Did we like it? How were our relationships? How was our family life? How was our pace of life? How did we spend our time? 

Two indicators in our lives can reveal to us what is most important to us:

1) Where do we spend our money?

2) where do we spend our time? 

Today, our time is more valuable than money. Often, people would rather give to a cause than to give their time to a cause. I have seen this play out when I have asked for volunteers for service needs or needs at our church. Many of us would rather give our money than our time. There isn’t necessarily something wrong with that, but it proves that money is more valuable than our time. 

Look back before the virus disrupted our lives and consider what did our lives look like in these two areas of time and money? Should we rush back to what was normal or should we make some changes? Were we using time and money in the best possible way? 

Granted there are aspects of life we don’t have a lot of control over given our job, school and bills and other commitments but consider the areas we can control such as family time, date nights with our spouse, one-on-one time with our children, forced sabbath or days of rest. We have an opportunity to re-set our lives now, to change the things we can change and to protect the things that are most important to us. 

I believe that we have more control over lives than we realize. We can make major adjustments if we wanted to. But many times the one thing that can cause us from making changes is the fear of the unknown and we say, “How much will it cost if we changed?” But maybe a better question is “How much will it cost if we don’t change?”

So, if we can do so, let us take time and consider our lives, where we have been and where do we want to go as we move into the future. Maybe, we shouldn’t rush back to normal, especially if normal wasn’t working.