Today is the day my very good friend Richard flies to Sweden for his study year abroad. Today, I was in B and Q with two family members.
Everyone except for my mother was obliging with the rules of social distancing and mask-wearing. Everyone except her was wearing a mask. While thinking about my friend being miles up in the sky, in a plane and on his way to a great fresh chapter in his “uni life”, I stumbled across what it was that aided his progress and what aided all the responsible B and Q goers’ progress too. Getting on with it.
It’s not a lot to adhere to rules that keep people safe. If not even for yourself, but for all the other people that live with us in our shops, streets, towns. You wear a mask and get on with it.
In my sixth month of being at home – sixth! – I have fallen into a rhythm of being, on the whole, more comfortable with my situation. There are things that I have control over and I exercise this control to relax over the fact that I’m still unemployed.
There is a game that I'm yet to play called Getting Over It in which a man stuck in a barrel full of water has only a long axe to help him get over objects in the terrain; trees, rocks, a house stuck on a mountain. It requires great skill and concentration to swing the barrel-man up and over these items, but mostly the key is to have persistence. It is incredibly difficult and frustrating as you have only a limited amount of control over this character’s momentum and movements.
Stood in B and Q and thinking of my friend flying away, I was reminded of this game and its title. You have to be on the good side of stubborn in this pandemic to able to get on with it, rather than feel personally victimised or impeded. To be self-impeded is utter nonsense, as ridiculous as a man stuck in a barrel.
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