anxiety

Letting go of attachment and learning to surf the COVID-19 waves

“You can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf.” Jon Kabat-Zinn

Some of us may not realise it but we are gradually learning to let go of some of our long held attachments. Attachments to ways of life we had before. Perhaps some of us used to go to the gym or exercise classes twice a week. Perhaps some of us would catch up with our friends every Friday night in our local. Perhaps some of us would frequent the shops on a daily basis depending on how peckish we were. The frustration and stress that comes with not being able to do these things is palpable. It can have us caught in a whirlwind of suffering. We can go round and round in our heads with negative stories circling around the idea that we have been wronged in some way. This doesn’t help us and only serves to cause us more suffering. So…slowly but surely we’re learning to bend to the times; to adapt to the present moment. We’re finding new ways to exercise in our situations. Suddenly we’re doing online classes we never thought we could do, or using our kids as weights for push ups or parts of our kitchen table for pull ups. Suddenly we’re scheduling catch ups with our friends via Face Time and a glass of wine. Suddenly we’re going to the theatre in our pjs. Suddenly we’re doing a ‘big shop’ for the week, carefully planning out our treats and appreciating how easy we had it before. We’re bending. We’re letting go of our old attachments that no longer serve us. We learn to surf the COVID-19 waves one by one. We’re getting through. So lets pat ourselves on the back more for the ways we’re adapting. We’re taking each day as it comes and we’re succeeding.