Wilfred top (similar)
Zara jeans (similar)
Dune London mules (c/o) (similar)
New Yorker tote (similar)
& Other Stories sunglasses
Stella & Dot necklace
Mejuri earrings (similar)
Location: The Great-West Life Building – Winnipeg, Manitoba
I wonder, every once in a while, about all the things that might not have happened if it weren’t for the pandemic. There’s so much we haven’t been able to do or enjoy for the past fifteen months. But that doesn’t mean nothing has happened – although often it feels that way. Life goes on. Time keeps marching forward. That’s what it always does, regardless of how we feel about it. It’s like Robert Frost said, “In three words, I can sum up everything I know about life: it goes on.”
He was right. Sometimes the way that life looks changes, but it always goes on. And the pandemic changed the course of our collective existence irrevocably. Although the changes aren’t necessarily permanent, we’ll always carry the memories of this time with us into the future. If it hasn’t already changed us, it will, and we will always be different than we might have been.
We’ll never truly know what might have happened in this time if life had gone on as it always had before. But I do know that if it had, I would have kept finding reasons I was too busy to start painting again. It’s plausible that I would have continued to delay visiting my doctor to discuss surgery I knew I wanted. (The idea of taking even a week off work that wasn’t devoted to travel seemed impossible to me fifteen months ago.) And while I know I would have been happy, there are many lessons that I needed to learn about slowing down, giving myself time to breathe and letting go of trivial things that I wouldn’t have learned… because I didn’t learn them until circumstances forced to me.
It’s easy to get caught up in thinking about how much of life we’re still missing out on. I know I do. As I type this, I have fifteen AirBNB tabs open to different apartments in Sorrento. I’m dying to return to Italy some hypothetical future where travel is feasible again. But I know, at least for me, that without this time, as much as it has alternately bored, frustrated and infuriated me, many wonderful things I never expected might simply not have happened. That’s the thing about life. No matter where it takes you, even if where it does take you isn’t where you wanted to go, the experience always changes you. And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I wouldn’t trade who I am today… even if it meant getting the last fifteen months back.
…still, this pandemic can’t end fast enough. I’m counting down to my second vaccination, whenever it may be!
I had never heard that Frost quote but I really love it. And yes, I am counting down the days until I can get my second dose and desperately hoping there will some vaccine access for Eleanor in the next year. I’m planning a short trip to Jasper for the early fall but I’m really itching to start travelling again to places further afield.
Courtney ~ Sartorial Sidelines