Is this an opportunity to hit the reset button?

Back when I was a kid, I’d religiously watch that show ‘Little House On the Prairie’ every Thursday night, marvelling at the life and time of ol’ Charles Ingalls, patriarch of the family. He’d bounce out of bed before the crack, milking the cow, letting the horses out, stoking the fire (chopping some extra wood if it were needed), boiling the water and giving his land the once over. His tomboy daughter Laura was often right by his side, showing as much if not more interest in life on the land. Then, lunch pail in hand, he’d head off for a day at the sawmill, working his fingers to the bone, with the fast flowing creek providing power via the paddle wheel. After their day at school, the kids would arrive home to do their chores, which to me seemed like a full days’ work in itself. Just part of being a kid in those times, I guess. Arriving home at dusk, Charles would often have traded some goods with one of the other workers – vegetables or a pie for roofing shingles or leather, much to the excitement of his wife Carolyn and tin lids. Of course, dinner in the late 1800s was always a home cooked meal, and it seemed to be some sort of stew with crusty bread almost every time. After supper, they’d all sit around the fire, with Charles playing his fiddle, or Carolyn reading a story. Brushing your hair a hundred times before bed was a religion. Sunday was a day of appreciation - quiet time and worship/thanks, with an especially large meal in the middle of the day. They were very poor, but appeared to lack nothing and more importantly want for nothing. Good times. Simple, selfless times.

Like many others, these past couple of months have been a good chance to take a bit of stock and reflect. The obsession with being the first to do something. The fixation with selfishly owning bigger, better and faster things. Never being satisfied. Being jealous. Doing unto others before they do unto us. Doing what we want just because we believe it’s our (small g) god-given right to do so, and hang the consequence. Believing that your poo smells sweeter (see my column from last week) than everyone else’s – which gives you the excuse to say “Oh, they’re not talking to me …”

A cup of tea on the back deck pondering just how things went from the simple life of Charles Ingalls and his family, to a life of hoarding toilet paper just so someone else didn’t have more than I do, and to ‘sneaking out’ because the thrill of not getting caught is more important than the bigger picture. At least for a short time, a traditional home-cooked meal has become the rule rather than the exception in recent months. Playing cards at the dining room table has bubbled to the surface again as a pastime of choice. Sitting outside in the fresh autumn air and reading a book (albeit online, or via audio) is no longer an act of desperation but a choice. Weeding the gardens is therapy, not a chore. Having an opportunity to take the time to literally smell the roses is a thing to be appreciated, not seen as missing out on something else. Reset.

Is it too much to hope that when things go back to ‘normal,’ the view we have of what actually is normal might be a little different to what it used to be? Maybe Charles and all the other in the late 19th Century had it right all along.