Remember How You Feel, Right Now

I felt liberated when I walked into a restaurant not wearing a mask for the first time in months. It was a few days before Omaha’s mask mandate officially ended, but no one stopped me, and I wasn’t alone in my rebellion. Even my rule-following wife left her mask in the car. We had regained our freedom to live as we wished, and it felt good.

A lot bothered me about wearing a mask, liked restricted breathing and foggy glasses, but what irritated me the most was the ambiguous reasoning behind the mandate. Still, I played along, until I was vaccinated. After interrupting my schedule to make two trips to a vaccination site, I felt that I was in the clear, so my resentment only grew as I waited for government officials to give me permission to ditch my mask. Finally, without fanfare, mandates began to expire, and our freedoms were slowly handed back to us.

For more than a year, we’ve had government officials tell us where we can and cannot go, how many of us can be there, where we can sit, and whether or not we need a mask and/or vaccination. Whether all of those restrictions were necessary is immaterial at this point. They happened, and we lived with them. While we lived with them, we didn’t really live. Precious opportunities to do things like visit elderly grandparents and celebrate momentous occasions were lost. While we can’t get those opportunities back, we absolutely must appreciate and embrace the opportunities ahead.

There are only so many days that we’re allowed to enjoy the lives with which we are blessed. Living through a pandemic should enhance our appreciation of each and every one of those days. That’s relatively easy to do now, when the memories of lockdowns and other pandemic restrictions are fresh in our minds, but what happens when we grow accustomed to living as we used to? How do we keep gratitude front and center?

I’m reminded of a time, nearly 20 years ago, when I was able to spend a morning in a motivational seminar. The speaker was particularly engaging, and I feverishly jotted down notes as I began to imagine how I was going to use my newfound knowledge to improve my life. By lunch time, I had no doubt that my life was about to change for the better in a big way. Sadly, that feeling was gone by the end of the week.

When I attended that seminar, I was working at my first sales job. That job taught me a lot about sales, but it was a burn-out job with very little potential, and it sucked away all of the momentum I gained in the seminar. Furthermore, we had just moved back to Nebraska, and had yet to sell our house in North Carolina. Two mortgages, two kids and a frustrating job occupied my thoughts and crowded out ambitious self-improvement.

Something similar can happen to us in our post-pandemic world, if we’re not careful. Many of us are already eagerly embracing our recovered freedoms and vowing to cherish everything a little bit more. While that’s great, the real challenge is maintaining that mindset, when the realities of life begin to drag us back into our tired routines and habits.

In order to get the most out of life, we must remind ourselves how we felt leaving our masks in the car for the first time, and take the time to be thankful for a life relatively unencumbered by restrictions. If we do this every day, our lives post-pandemic can be even better than they were before the world got weird.