Over time, I've made a relatively small number of commitments including the following:
- commitment to my studies
- commitment to the work places and missions I chose
- commitment to relationships as a wife, daughter, mother, cousin, niece, friend
- commitments to creativity via writing, gardening, drawing
- commitment to good times, get togethers, and celebrations
- commitment to adventures in nature
In general, those have been my life's commitments. Only a few times throughout my life have I had to work to get the initiative and inspiration to stay true to my commitments as for the most part I have believed deeply in these commitments and I've been wholly drawn to doing what I can to successfully carry out my roles within these areas of commitment.
Lately, however, I've been thinking about the commitments at the forefront of my life--commitments outside of my home and family. Why did I choose the most recent commitments and have those choices been the right choices?
When COVID struck, we were all in a place that forced us to commit to some lifestyle changes. The limitations in place were great, and to stay positive and productive, we had to make some difficult choices. I used the age-old pros and cons list to decide to leave my teaching career, spend more time with my elderly parents, and focus on family in general. Now that the world is opening up again, I'm looking around and noticing the choices others made during the COVID chapter. I'm noticing how their choices have impacted their lives today and where they are taking those choices now that the COVID limitations are not as tight or limiting.
For me, post-COVID- limitations means a time when people are once again spreading out more with travel, new pursuits, renewed and new relationships and more varied engagements too. The life I chose during COVID was a good match for the limitations COVID created, but not as good a match for this post-COVID-limitation time since in many ways the parameters are too narrow and the team too small now. These leaves me with the feeling that it's time to reconsider some of my commitments at the moment--to essentially change some of the work I do to make it fit this new time in society better and more.
What will I change? How will my commitments morph to reflect a now more open and varied landscape?
I'm wondering if others are noticing this shift in their own lives as work places, communities, and families adapt to this somewhat of a post-COVID time? Recently at a public event, the woman next to me and I noticed a lot of people were acting in a peculiar, confused manner. We both shook our heads and just blamed the confusion on the current shift away from the limitations in place. In some ways, people are meeting the world anew, and it's not the same world we essentially hid away from a couple of years ago.
I believe that the commitments we make help to strengthen and better the lives we live. I have few to no regrets about the good commitments I enjoy and have enjoyed throughout life. Now it's a time to revisit many of those commitments, to give them new light, and to reinvest in the good those commitments hold for my life and the lives of others too. Onward.