2020 will forever be known as the year of the Global Pandemic. With the pandemic came so many questions. What is COVID-19? Where did it come from? What will it do? How do we best respond to it? Should we shut down and stay home? If so, to what degree and for how long? How much risk should we accept? What policies and practices will best honor the value of human life?
These and many other questions have swirled around us for months now, many of them without good answers. I suppose all of us have been sucked into these questions to some degree, trying to answer them for ourselves while those in power around us draw conclusions and make decisions affecting everyone on earth.
The decision of most governments to effectively shutdown society in hopes of slowing the spread of the virus altered life for everyone. Early on, we laughed and cried about the strange effect of those changes. Social media lit up with coping mechanisms, from an outpouring of hilarious memes to an insufferable amount of videos showing us how to stay fit in our living rooms. As humans do, we settled into a “new normal” with passage of time. And now we restlessly debate how and when to get things “back to normal,” many of those fundamental questions still swirling around us.
This all has me asking a question that I think deserves more air-time: Of all the changes forced upon us by the pandemic, which ones should we keep?
I ask this because our response to the virus, as tough as it has been, has included some beneficial side effects. Some of the forced changes have benefited our entire planet. Others are relevant to our nation, state, or local government. Still others are powerful elements of religion, and perhaps most significant of all are the positive changes that have been forced up individuals and families.
I’m very fond of Elder Henry B. Eyring’s observation:
Most of us have had some experience with self-improvement efforts. My experience has taught me this about how people and organizations improve: the best place to look is for small changes we could make in things we do often. There is power in steadiness and repetition. And if we can be led by inspiration to choose the right small things to change, consistent obedience will bring great improvement.
Uniquely, we’ve already made a bunch of changes. Which of those changes should we keep? What elements of our lives, forced aside by COVID-19, should we leave out permanently? What did the pandemic bring into our lives that we should continue?
I have a list of things I hope that I, my family, my Church, my nation, my fellow humans will continue in the wake of the pandemic shutdown of 2020. Sure, I have little faith in any sort of fruitful global or national conversation about this. That will probably never happen. But it doesn’t really matter. Global circumstances are ultimately determined by the decisions of individuals anyway. So if we all took some time to think about it, we should be fine.
It’s taking some willpower to resist sharing mine here, but I’m going to resist because I don’t think my personal preferences are the point. Instead, I’ll say this: Pondering the changes I’d like retain has been a valuable exercise and I recommend it.
Wishing everyone the best as we try to hang onto whatever silver lining came with such a remarkable time in human history.
Brigham Rupp 