Reflections on Fridays

Do any of us remember what a normal Friday feels like anymore?

Friday used to be a day of joy and frivolity, of light spirits and optimism.

It was a day we anticipated someone bringing donuts into the office.  It was a day that consisted of a lot of standing around in hallways and talking about one’s weekend plans, or laughing about the follies of the week just passed.  It was a day that one anticipated leaving work early, either to go home and get the yard work knocked out early, to meet friends at a restaurant, or just to enjoy some down time.

And now, a lot of that seems like some sort of half-forgotten memory, or half-remembered dream.

The notion of leaving work early has become sort of meaningless, since many of us are working from home.  What are we leaving early from?  Or to?  The entire notion of “early” seems nonsensical now.  It would consist entirely of the phrase, “I’m shutting down my laptop early so I can walk into the other room.”

And then there’s the jarring realization that there is nowhere to go.  The restaurants are closed, as are the malls, movie theaters, bars, bowling alleys, parks, health clubs, book stores … everything.

So wither would we go?

I suspect a lot of us are just getting in our cars and driving around aimlessly just to get out of the house a bit.  If the weather is nice, we go for walks around the neighborhood.

For those of us who are homebodies, none of this is a hardship.  Even under ordinary circumstances, I don’t get out much.  But nothing makes one want to get out more than being forced to stay indoors.  Cabin fever is a very real thing, even among introverts and those with social anxiety.

So I cannot imagine what this must be like for the outgoing, gregarious types in our society.  This must be a particularly harsh circle of hell for them.

But I will leave you with this.

This will be over soon.  Life will return to normal.  This will be one of those things that pops up on our Facebook feed as a “Ten Years Ago” reminder, causing us to say, “Oh, yes.  I’d almost forgotten about that!”

And if there is one thing I hope and pray we all take out of this, it is that we all need each other.  I hope we gain an appreciation for those in our society who are largely invisible to us, but upon whom we depend on desperately:

• the people who grow and harvest and deliver our food to us
• those who stock our shelves and ring up our purchases
• those who work the drive-through windows and the grills and the fryers
• those who clean our water and keep the pumps running
• those who keep the electricity flowing into our homes
• those who teach our kids
• those who defend our various countries
• those who create and maintain the very infrastructure around us: the streets and sewers and traffic signals and means of communication and trash pick-up, etc.
• And millions upon millions of others that we rarely see, but whose work we depend upon and enjoy the benefits of.

So even after all of this is over, let us all be a little bit kinder and appreciative of those around us.

We all need each other.   We all depend upon each other.  We are all interconnected.

And together we make the most fantastic, beautiful, amazing tapestry that has ever existed in any place, or any time.