Many of us are yearning for life to return to normal. We can socialize without zoom and Facetime, we can go wherever we want and we can stop feeling anxious that life just entered the Twilight Zone.
As a creature of habit, I too crave “normalcy.” At the same time, I am truly enjoying the slower pace. I am fortunate that way. While I prefer seeing clients in-person, I can work from home, which cuts down my commute. As teenagers, my kids are very independent in their school work. Without their extracurricular activities, we have more unstructured time both together and individually.
So, do I want a return to normalcy?
I saw a post on Facebook that stated “Nothing should go back to normal. Normal wasn’t working.”
I realize the post was likely referencing life on a greater scale than my personal life. However, I have been really thinking about it. Was my “normal” working? I was exhausted and often stressed. I also frequently received feedback that I needed to make my schedule easier. Clearly there is some truth to that if the slow down feels so good.
I think sometimes we get so caught up in living our lives through full participation that we neglect to take a step back and observe it. I am trying to take this pause to do that.
I am left with a conflict. I like my “before” life and all the parts of it that can make it feel overwhelming. I do believe we always have options to cut things out, even when those don’t feel like great options. That said, there is very little I want to cut out. More importantly, I prefer having the drawbacks of participating in each of these features to the drawbacks of not participating in them.
It turns out that I like a busy lifestyle AND I like a slower pace. It is what DBT refers to as a dialectic. Two seemingly opposing positions are true at the same time.
I love the structure my kids’ activities give them AND I don’t love some of the structure it adds to my schedule
I like where my office is AND I dislike taking so much time out of my day to commute.
I hate getting up at 4 to take my son to swim practice before school three mornings a week AND I love the extra productive hours.
I love what I do for a living AND there are times it makes me stressed and miserable (isn’t that true for many?)
I love time in the car with my kids so we can talk AND I wish we had to spend less time in the car getting to and from activities.
I could go on like this for a long time.
I would like to work on finding a better balance, but not on adopting one style over the other. Some of that balance needs to come from action choices. Perhaps I need to take more breaks and say “no” more often.
Some of the balance needs to come from a shift in mindfulness. At times, I pay more attention to the negative half of those statements than the positive. The positive and negative components need to be balanced in my thoughts.
For now, I don’t have the option of my “normal schedule.” I can’t say I won’t complain, but I will try to remain mindful of the joy in the slower pace.
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