What Will Your “New Normal” Look Like?
“In family relationships, love is really spelled, t-i-m-e, time.”
–Dieter F Uchtdorf
As I sit in my new home office overlooking Miramar rooftops during Covid-19 Level 4 lockdown, I’ve had time to contemplate our new way of living (for however long that may be). I would be the first to say that I am looking forward to returning to ‘normal,’ whatever that means. I look forward to returning to Scots College, to see the students and my colleagues, but there are certain elements of the current lockdown that I have to say I will find extremely difficult to say goodbye to.
I’m relishing the time away from the rigid routine to go for a walk, to do daily exercise, to cook more, to finally watch a series on tv at night, which is rare for me. What I have loved the most about some time away from the usual frantic pace of life is undoubtedly the time spent with my whanau.
My family ‘bubble’ consists of my wife, my two teenage daughters and me. I have always known how important family is and I often talk about spending quality time with the ones you love, but if I’m brutally honest, I spend more time at work and in work related tasks than I do with my family. Rightly or wrongly, that is the nature of my work and I would hazard a guess that this is the reality for most working families across the nation. Parenting mentor Mary Willow from Plum Parenting says that, “If we can look upon this period as an adventure rather than a jail term, we can bridge the children through it and set them up for expanded minds and hearts on the other side, rather than residual anxiety and scars. Your family ship is in new waters. Let the adventure begin!”
The quote by Dieter F Uchtdorf, “In family relationships love is really spelled, t-i-m-e, time,” resonates now more than ever before. The lack of kids’ sport, meetings at night, rushing from one thing to the other has enabled us to take a pause on the day- to-day normality and sail our ‘family ship in new waters.’
We have momentarily swapped the madness of life for daily family walks, family dinners, cooking alongside my daughters, creating innovative ways to celebrate birthdays in lockdown and family squabbles over winning and losing board games – not that I’m competitive!
This family time has created so much fun and so many positive memories within our home that I am going to struggle to go back to family life pre-lockdown.
Note to self: Try and take some of the learnings around whanau time from the lockdown and incorporate them into life when it returns to ‘normal!’ As L. Tom. Perry once said, “It is more important than ever to make our families the centre of our lives and the top of our priorities.”
