How to pace yourself during the Coronavirus lock-down

It is slowly dawning on us all that this is not going to be a sprint. We are beginning to understand that we’ll be living with this virus (and our radically different lives) for some considerable time.

I’m not surprised it’s taking us a while to adjust. It’s only three months since the first cases were seen in Wuhan. Yet at the time of writing Covid-19 has spread to 203 countries and territories. Over 1 million people have been infected. And this is only the people who have been tested. It is remarkable that we are going through such a transformation simultaneously across the globe.

Our workplace systems are not designed for this. We are currently relying on a small group of people to keep us safe, well and fed: the medical and emergency staff on the frontline. The farmers. The folk in the supermarkets and pharmacies. The delivery drivers and postmen. To adapt Churchill’s quote: “Never in the field of human history has so much been owed by so many to so few.”

Unprecedented is an over-used word right now and we have become rather inured to it. But how do we describe this in another way? How do we get our heads around what is happening when it has never happened before, when it is indeed unprecedented?

At times it can feel overwhelming to contemplate the changes. Our brains are struggling. We have only had weeks to get used to the new reality.