Living with Strength and Kindliness

Time to Reset

My sister and I were really excited on Monday morning when Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced some small changes to the state restrictions to manage the current Covid-19 crisis – we are allowed to play golf!

Now, let’s not get too excited here.  We are actually not very good at playing golf!  But, we started to play golf at the start of this year as something fun to do and as we get older we are slightly less agile (well I am anyway) and not really cut out for women’s football or anything that requires too much strenuous activity!

It seems funny that over the last couple of months we have really missed something that is actually a pretty simple pleasure.

But then again, despite some of the frustrations around being kept away from what we usually get up to, this really has been a time to reset.  We have had time to just ‘be’.  We have had time to develop new habits. I have made a batch of relish and I tried my hand at preserving some olives.  One of my friends has made all her friends a jar of quince jam!  I have tried some new recipes (not all successful), and I have planted some garlic (I have never grown garlic before in my life!).  There is a knitting pattern and some wool on the side of the couch in the loungeroom, which I haven’t started yet, but I plan to… soon!  People are cooking rather than eating out, they are mending clothes rather than buying them, they are reading and making and dreaming and learning to do new things  (I did ask for the drill the other day but that was not met with a handing over of the drill…I am not sure why!).

We have seen some of the systems of capitalism and consumerism and social envy and social striving pass us by as we have had time to undertake more meaningful pursuits.

We have started to do more and watch less, to compare less and learn to be.  We have seen the world begin the process of healing now that some of the pollution has subsided, big cities are making more bike tracks to accommodate the increase in bicycling.  I smiled when I heard that plant nurseries will be one of the retail shops that will be opened first in the UK, not a designer label boot store.  And while, sadly, writers of new books cannot commence tours to promote their new books booksellers are struggling to fill the online orders made by keen readers during this time of social isolation.

The challenge is now to take these newly formed habits into the ‘new normal’ once the gates lift.

The question is when the wheels begin to turn again, how do we wish to live, what lessons have we learnt, how can we be different?

I read this beautiful quote the other day, ‘Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that will make all the difference’ Mignon McLaughlin 1960.

I haven’t undertaken my usual winter clothes shop for the 2020 winter season.  I am now seriously considering buying a new set of golf clubs.

Who would have thought...! If you call me and I don’t answer…I am at the Back 9!

Kirrilee Westblade

Catholic Identity Leader