What is different? What has changed?
What is different for you now, because of what has changed?
If you’ve ever been to a yoga class, or any mindfulness class really – they typically start it with a “check-in” question. A question meant to make you feel seen and connected – I won’t even lie, I hated them.
When you’re new to the space or that environment, those questions make you feel more isolated than anything. Let’s get real – for those of us who weren’t raised in a mindfulness space, the idea is shallow at best. I can be honest with myself and admit that this is leaning, rather heavily, on the side of projection but that’s just how it’s always felt. A part of that is because the space never felt like it was made or meant for someone like me… Too real? Sorry, we’re changing the pace of this, I promise.
Ladies, gentlemen and individuals alike – I have seen the light. Check-in questions are my bread and butter. They still make me feel a little isolated at times, but they work wonders for self-reflection. The good questions make you feel like time has paused, for just a second, and you discover a new sort of silence.
What is it we’ve started to say? In the silence, you can find your fresh perspective – something like that. We’ll try to refine this statement by next week’s fresh perspective, I promise. The working statement, for now, will be, “there’s so much to hear in silence.“
Anyways, enough of this puff piece.
I heard a check-in question this weekend, that blew my mind.
What is different for you now, because of what has changed?
And nothing at all.
I will make this make sense, I swear. Bear. With. Me.
That question, made everything make sense – at least in that moment.
What is different for you now, because of what has changed?
The entire world, I feel, has been talking about slowing down. In fact, next week’s fresh perspective is going to be reminding you to slow it down. However, I’ve been doing the exact opposite.
The “New Normal”
In the midst of determining what the new normal is, we’ve failed to acknowledge that we’ve been living it. The moment you begin to experience a sense of familiarity – you are living a normal. So, what is different for me now?
Everything.
We have never lived, in the world of tomorrow. All the zoom calls, all the facetimes, all the random videos of me on Instagram mean very little – we’ve never met before. We’ve never met the world we’re bound to meet and we’ve never met the friends with which we’ll reconnect.
And so, I’ve tried my hardest to take back some type of control. I loved life before the false start that was Ms. Rona, I really did. But did I love it – e n o u g h? Did you? Can you honestly say that you want everything to go back to the way it was?
Truthfully, we’ve always been able to choose who we want to be, whether it be day by day or moment by moment. We decide who we are through the decisions that we make, and the perspectives that guide us through it. But it’s always been easier said than done.
The Big Discovery
We have never lived in the world of tomorrow. Now, this isn’t a revelation statement – this has been true of all the tomorrow’s we’ve ever seen. Yet, the idea becomes heightened given the quarantined situation.
The problem with normalcy, is that its familiarity is intoxicating. Think about it – when you settle into a sense of routine, its habits are hard to break. Consider this, every friend you have – has a version of you in their heads. And not all of those versions are similar to the version you have of yourself. With that being said, unconsciously, we edit our behaviour to fit the mold of the version others have of you. It’s nearly impossible not to.
But, what if you didn’t? What if, quarantine has given us a clean slate? Eventually, we’ll be able to leave our houses and reconnect with the friends of old. Eventually, we’ll have become so accustomed to the “new normal” that it’ll feel paralleled to the world we used to know.
Only this time, you have the power to decide. You get to choose the version of you that people meet. You get to be the best unedited version of yourself, free of the expectations of others. So much has changed – you can too.
We’ll always end our fresh perspectives, with the easiest way to change the narrative – here’s ours. I will not be settling in to a new normal, I will be creating it. You will be introduced to a version of me that is real, littered with imperfections and at peace.
I look forward to meeting you all again, for the first time and I promise not to hold you to who I thought you were – I hope you do the same.
