Keep Living.

Since the start of 2020 many people view what’s happening at home and around the world and just want to take a permanent break from life.

Let’s hope no one stays at this point for the rest of the year.

So, at first I did not take the corona virus seriously. When you don’t know, you don’t know.

However, the rate of infection across the world is alarming and so requires everyone’s full attention. But, let’s be optimistic and pray for a speedy recovery from it. Though over 85000 global cases and a death toll of even one person, much less over 2,900 is a little, tiny bit alarming. This virus is a reminder, we may all feel we did not need, of how quickly the world as we know it can change.

With the real possibility of the outbreak becoming pandemic in 3, 2, 1… We are all grappling to make sense of our own lives much less the threat of a “novel” virus, breathing down our collective necks, relentlessly. I know here in Jamaica many jokingly agree that if it gets here we are all doomed, but if we don’t laugh what will we do? Why cry of course.

“Take a break but we should not retire”

However, we do not cry but crack jokes about climbing the Blue Mountains to escape it, but invariably someone has to point out that many would freeze so “it don’t make sense”. Ah boy, some people just won’t let others win! So while we try to outwit each other with witticisms about how to escape this thing; c’est la vie .

So we try every day to be as normal as possible – which by the way, normal can be very subjective. However, things happen daily that give us a proverbial lesson that planning is good, but not always foolproof. Does that mean we should just wait out the storms when they come?

While we may have the opportunity to take cover and wait out a difficult period, we should never stop going, especially when we have a deep conviction about what we are doing. We may take a break but we should not retire from taking the actions that will help us, to advance closer to where we want to be. While we may miss the target many times, we must still aim for the bull’s eye. While we may move forward with uncontrollable fear weakening our steps, we should never stop moving. We should never stop taking action. We should never stop laughing, even with the tears that seem unrelenting. We should never stop making things a little more bearable for everyone with our words and action We should never stop trying to give of our best, even if our best has to be redefined. Even when we stop, let us stop for a while, but keep going when the while has passed.

Life is a beautiful puzzle we all need to embrace, to pick a part and put back together, because we have no other choice, because we have been blessed with it. So while we face the challenges great and small, local and global, maybe we should not make it more complicated by causing traffic jams but just keep moving.