Judgement Free Sneezing
This year has taken so much from all of us. Summer was cancelled, we can no longer tell someone’s emotional state purely by their facial expression, seeing your favorite artist live is a dream of the past, and if that wasn’t enough… Saturdays are no longer for the boys. 2020 will go down as a horror story that we tell to our grandkids, beginning with the phrase “back in my day…”, and they will laugh at us, not truly knowing how bad it all really got.
The other day I took a trip to the store, and while walking through an aisle I sneezed. I know you’re thinking “what’s the big deal,” right? Well, at that moment, everyone within six feet of me dove Rambo style as if trying to avoid an extremely accurate live grenade. Long story short, after that, I felt like Norman Bates from the show, “Bates motel.”
While picking out the shrapnel from my traumatic shopping experience I had some time to think about the deeper meaning behind it all. I realized that before March of this year… we were all so caught up in our daily lives, almost like we are under a deep hypnosis. A trance, only to be broken briefly by the extremes like terrorist attacks, car wrecks, bad weather, or riots. Then Corona happens and it all.. comes to… a HALT.
At first, there’s a part of us that is happy with this newfound “slower” world. Working from home in our PJs everyday? Not having to work and getting unemployment checks every two weeks? Sounds like heaven at first, am I right? But that excitement soon dies out…we soon realize how isolating this new world is. We’ve become caged animals, only let outside for our daily walk. We’re confined to four walls with no where to go and no one to see. We can’t go to work, we can’t go out to dinner, we can’t go to gyms, we can’t see our friends and family….we can’t even see people’s full-faces!!
I realized that it’s all of the little things that we have grown to expect in our day to day lives that are the most valuable to us. Things like being able to see our families, saying “hello” to our neighbors, or having a great date night with your partner that aid in our sanity. These are the activities that feed our souls, and keep us feeling refreshed enough to take on tomorrow.
So, when all of this is said and done, and the world is back to normal…take with you all of the tricks you have learned over this past year to maintain your sanity, and always remember how lucky we are to sneeze in public judgment-free. As they say… “sneezing is 1/10th of an orgasm”… so, let out a few more while you’re at it! Happy Holidays!