Pre-Covid it was work, work, work, lockdown has allowed us to live a well-rounded interesting life outside work. Covid has given us a chance to reconnect with family, children, nature and most importantly ourselves.

“If you want to change the world start off by making your bed. If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day, it will give you a small taste of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another and by the end of the day you will have achieved many tasks and it will reinforce that the little things in life matter and if you can’t do the little things right, you’ll never be able to do the big things right. And if by chance you have a miserable day you will come home to a bed that is made, that you made, and coming home to a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.” So said a Navy Seal commander at a graduation ceremony for successful recruits and is a great life lesson especially in these times of lockdown and waiting for borders to open when we can all get back to a routine of work and stress our preferred normalcy.

Throughout the past year the social media has exploded with life at home memes of seemingly no direction and nothing more to do than watch TV, Facebook, Instagram, twitter and make Tik Tok videos. People talk about living constantly in pyjamas, doing wine tours from lounge, to kitchen to bedrooms.  

It has also seen the explosion of online learning not just for school children but as an opportunity for everyone to learn how to paint, crochet, do yoga, speak a language, read books, take virtual tours of the Louvre, Rome, or any number of creative and bucket list things people talk about they would do if they won lotto and could leave work and do whatever they want.

Well, maybe no lotto win but what have they done? Are those tired of lockdown now better educated by degrees than pre-Covid? Are they skill based in the dream job they have always wanted, but not had the time to change, study for? Have they completely cleaned out their closets of clothing they never wear, aren’t going to wear, and don’t like? Is the pantry, linen cupboard clean and sorted, the attic tidy and orderly, the tile grout in the bathroom scrubbed like new, the garden weeded and redesigned to something like all those DIY makeover programme everyone watches? Have they played a hundred games of Monopoly with the kids, taught them how to play chess, checkers, cards-poker, solitaire, fish? Did they solve the Rubik’s cube, build the worm farm, make Christmas gifts? 

Setting goals like making the bed – these are little things, that if done right, or even attempted for the purpose of finding a purpose in the endless stretch of days confined to your own backyard and 5km block matter because little achievements added together fulfill bigger goals. A task no matter how small achieved is a measure of success. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, said “details matter. It’s worth waiting to get it right. If you place the emphasis on getting the little things right and address the everyday problems that come up, you can encourage a culture of attention to detail. Details make perfection and perfection is not a detail.”  I’m not sure that we can or should all aim at perfection as it can over stress many to a dangerous level when in essence excellence is often seen and accepted as the same by the majority at large. 

The attention to details of putting two bricks together one at a time, is the pathway to the completion of the building at large, and if the attention to detail does not begin at the beginning stages, then the safety and inevitability of achieving the larger goal falls short. Having said all this, I do believe even if life is not perfect it can still be wonderful.

Covid has given us all a chance to branch out to try something else, be something else. I know in the Cooks many of us have tried the courses on offer for free. Sign language, speaking Maori, learn to paint, cook, carve and upskill ourselves in excel, bookkeeping, sewing and fitness classes. We have become busier with new sports, clubs and activities to try we could never contemplate before. Pre-Covid it was work, work, work, lockdown has allowed us to live a well-rounded interesting life outside work. Covid has given us a chance to reconnect with family, children, nature and most importantly ourselves.

When the borders open are we ready?  Have we attended to the details? Will, the airport baggage carousel operate properly without stalling? Will the Empire bridge work recommence before or after the tourists arrive? Will our economy thrive again in this bed we’ve made for ourselves?