SUNNYSIDE UP MOMENT - APRIL 27, 2020

DAY FORTY-TWO OF THE CORONAVIRUS QUARANTINE FOR US AT STACK 'EM HIGH PANCAKES AND SO FORTH

If you ask any parent especially of young children what they would like for Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, I wager they would say, “five minutes to myself.”  If you ask employees what they would like for their birthday, I bet they would say, “the day off.”  If you ask your elderly neighbor what they would like for Christmas, I wouldn’t be surprised if they answered, “another Christmas.”  Our most valuable commodity is time.  Yet we squander it, we waste it, we take it for granted.

The pandemic has given us fodder for fear and cause for grave concern.  But it has also given us copious amounts of time.  And time is the one gift that unwraps all the others.  As we enter our sixth week of quarantine, many people have been reading books, baking bread, taking classes, exploring creative outlets.  Others have been working to keep us safe, to keep us healthy and to keep us fed.  How we spend our days is obviously a personal and private matter.  But how we leave our legacy can be a remarkably transformative and beautiful experience.  Barry Lopez wrote, “Make your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.”  Maybe this particular spring was meant to be our time to shine.