How to Stay Sane During a Pandemic

I have a tip to help you keep your sanity as you are social distancing at home. This doesn’t involve creative ways to exercise while hunkered down. It doesn’t include a sourdough bread recipe or a Netflix recommendation. It involves some reflection.

I’ve been thinking about how much worse being stuck inside at home would be if I was living in the past.

This could have happened back in 2002 when we had a 725-square-foot condo in Toronto. It was nice but small for two people. We were newlyweds, but I expect Heather would have left me if we had been stuck together this long (I wouldn’t have blamed her). We had even considered staying there when we got pregnant, but it would have been terrible for three and even worse for a family of four. Imagine parents with two young children stuck in such small quarters during a pandemic?

We once shared an apartment with five flatmates in Edinburgh, Scotland. We had one telephone, one bathroom, one kitchen (and one bottle of Fairy) between all seven of us. This was before Netflix. We had to walk several blocks to the video store to rent movies. Renting movies wouldn’t have been possible being locked indoors with businesses shuttered. We had no internet, only internet cafes blocks away that would have also been closed.

It could have been far worse. We could be in Galway, Ireland sharing a tiny apartment with three unpredictably, irrational flatmates (no, not you Ben, Aaron, and Maura, a different place). One flatmate was temperamental, one was a psychotic gypsy, and the other was a criminal. We didn’t have a television in our room back then. We had a lock on the door to sleep (somewhat) peacefully. Quarantining in that place would have been hell.

If COVID-19 had arrived in 1988, I would have been living alone in a dark, musty, basement apartment. That “swanky” bachelor pad (err, dump) had one tiny, ground-level window facing some bushes and only one room. It didn’t even have an oven for baking precious sourdough bread, it came with a hotplate. COVID-88 would have sucked.

Try Reflecting

Reflecting on some of the places I have lived has made me more empathetic. I consider the different scenarios that other people are going through today. This perspective has left me much more content as I continue to hunker down with my amazing family.

We have our health. We have a roof over our heads. We have an oven and enough yeast to bake sourdough bread (we haven’t tried yet). We have a treadmill, Netflix, and even toilet paper. We are going to be okay.

I’m just going to resist boasting about it online.

Reflect on what you have now compared to the past. Consider how others must be dealing with living in such close quarters under these unpredictable, unfortunate days.

Stay safe, friends. Be kind. Wash your hands.

Photo by Devin Avery on Unsplash.