I guess that gleaming a lesson from everything is wired into my Teacher DNA. We search for meaning and purpose in everything.
This is the insight that Lockdown has given me. Let me start from day 1. Like many of you, when I found out that I would be confined to my home with my family for this extended period, I started to plan. I made lists of things I was going to do: came up with little projects to sustain the days and tried to work out how I was going to balance my life. All I wanted during Lockdown was for our household to be a happy place – full of laughter and shining eyes. How I was going to achieve this, goodness only knew. Whilst I was trying to get my head around the next few weeks quite by accident I came across a Mindfulness Journey run online by Londolozi. I hadn’t done anything like it before, so thought I would give the course a go. Their quiet reflections often spoke about gratitude, and this became a subtle theme in the background to my Lockdown. The most over-riding emotion that I feel after looking back on the past 21+14 Days is that of gratitude. I have always known my thankfulness for the life that I have been given, but considering the perspective which I have gleaned now, this gratitude is more intense. I have gleaned a better understanding of what it means to be grateful. I think that too often being appreciative is dummed down to a list of obligations, or sometimes guilts, but I learnt that being grateful is a million little realisations that happen all the time, and leave one feeling humbled. I am grateful for being able to live on a campus abundant with birds and small wildlife: an oasis in the city. I am grateful for having my wife and two children with me over Lockdown. I am grateful to be able to end each day in the arms of the woman I love. I am grateful for having a salary where I could put food on the table. Grateful for the warm summer days, for imagination, for virtual safaris, my workshop, laughter, warm conversations after the kids had gone to sleep, books, a pencil and paper, music, wine (until it ran out). Grateful for the rain, for the “Good Lord Deliver Us” Nightjar in the field next to our house. I am grateful for all of the people that were not with me: my parents, brother, friends, students, colleagues. I would start my day with these thoughts every morning, trying not to repeat any of my gratitudes. Before the sun came up, and the dawn was an orange blush on the horizon, I would ride my mountain bike around our school trails on my own. We were lucky to have this privilege living on the campus. Our house and the rest of the world was still asleep, and as I rode, the world would awaken with a chorus of birds, each one joining with songs as they were shaken from rest. There was a peacefulness without traffic, without aircraft overhead. I would startle spurfowl near the ridge, the same family of two adults and three podgy chicks. I joined flocks of brown red bishops, fluffy in their winter coats and watched long-tailed mousebirds fly overhead. The grass would be entwined with dewy spiderwebs and if I was lucky I would see the slender mongooses behind the astro. And I would escape into my mind as I rode. This me time became so important. It gave me a space to reflect on past, present and future. In the pace of our world, brimming with doing and not enough breathing, I had forgotten to be still and introspect. And so in this way I began to look at how to disrupt the imminent “Groundhog Day” feel that lockdown would wear. I found that social media became a scrapbook more than an activity. I found that television and Netflix lost their appeal very quickly. So instead of a digital world, we decided to explore our garden more and make things together. We started creating a list of birds that visited our garden which swelled to over 50 different species. We watched a Black Sparrowhawk chase a dove overhead, counted the starlings and barbets that feasted at our bird table. We crept up to the thrushes and robins that flitted in the dark recesses of trees. On one afternoon, the louries were alarming in the paperbark tree and following their gaze, we saw a spotted eagle owl that was sunning itself on a hidden corner of our roof. We made kites, flew tethered Chinese Lanterns, created board games. We watched the sunrise and counted the stars. We had picnics on the lawn and created pretend campsites under the trees. We played with the dogs, whittled model boats from wood and had drive ins in the garden. We watched our neighboring the blacksmith plovers hatch and fledge. My daughter created safaris where we stalked around the garden to find hidden soft toy animals. We painted, sketched and drew. Made things out of clay. And baked…a lot. We made our own pizzas, braai’d on the patio and read books. We made milkshakes, roasted marshmallows, climbed trees and lay in the sun. We enjoyed virtual game drives and watched the hyaena pups grow up on Wild Earth. We revisited old photographs of family holidays and made our own colorfully frothy experiments. We did all of the things that we never seemed to find the time for in our normal life. Not that there weren’t the distractions of the odd iPad here and there, but we tried to bury the technology as much as we could. Outside was our refuge. And in each of these moments, I realsed something. I found that creating time together as a family where we did small things together was so important, and something that I had neglected prior to lockdown. And most of it evolved around being outdoors. As a family we began to thirst for the bush, for the wild spaces. I don’t know how many other people felt the same. I guess that with the silence of the deserted streets and clear skies, nature showed herself more regularly, or maybe we just spent more time outside to see her. I wonder how many other things had been forgotten prior to Lockdown. I wonder how many of those things would hold more meaning in all of our lives after Lockdown? I wonder if we will all carry on being grateful for the world around us when life returns to normal? I wonder… I guess that what I am trying to say is that despite being confined to missing so much, I think that we gained a lot as a family as well. I am not sure that I want to be inside all the time in front of a screen. I think that I need to slow things down sometimes. I need to make more time for the people that are rooted in my heart. I need to make space to think. Time has allowed me more moments to be thankful for all of this. As the crisp autumn leaves begin to drop from the trees, I find that my gratitude has made me re-scaffold my priorities. I will not always have time like this, and when work begins again, another layer will be added to my world. As it must. But I should not forget what I have learnt. As I prepare for the new term, I find that my teaching prep is becoming more inquisitive, more probing. I focus my efforts more on life lessons than how to guides. I look at transplanting more introspection between lines of literature and self-awareness in the rhyme of a poem. I will work at the balance of my life. What can say with conviction, is that there is something about being outside that serves as a constant reminder of this balance. As the wind presses gently against my skin and the sun warms my back, I feel something nourishing about just being outside. Being able to look at the piercing blue sky just feels less sterile. There is an energy to the world that is given by the elements. It brings a feeling of interconnectedness, it brings a sense of rhythmic life. It brings joy. And what I have realized, is what I am most grateful for: the opportunities that the outside world creates to feel this joy with the people that I love. Because eventually, our global crisis will end, and when it does, it will be important that what we have all learnt during Lockdown does not.
0 Comments
|
ContentSome thoughts about things, sometimes philosophical, sometimes just musings. The world through my eyes... Archives
March 2023
Categories
All
|