Lessons In A Pandemic

And I'm not downplaying the importance of that, but also we have to be conscious of what we consume, what we eat, not just in the sense of physical food, but also in the sense of what we take in through media, through books, everything. Because it all has effect on us psychologically. Hi, guys. My name is Donnie Rouse, and you are listening to the podcast One Life Lessons From a Pandemic. Every experience we have in life is balanced. If it's bad, there's an equal good, and if it's good, there's an equal bad. The decision we have to make, what's up to us, is to find that good, find the more empowering meaning. So we are in the midst of this whole COVID 19 epidemic. And to be honest with you, for myself, every day has been kind of a rollercoaster. Mixed feelings, feelings of helplessness, feelings of despair, feelings of joy, feelings of gratitude. It's this. This hodgepodge of feelings. But it also depends on what I choose to focus on in that moment. One of the things that has happened through this whole experience of being kind of home locked is, is that I've been. I've actually spent more time outdoors than I normally would. And what I've noticed, and I started noticing different things. Even walking down the same streets that I've been down a thousand times started noticing different things. I started noticing different shapes of trees, the details, everything, because the rest of the world was shut down. It almost forced me in a way of just kind of being a little bit more conscious, a little bit more. I'm not sure what the word is, but what information you pick up and from whom. If I stay at home with my, like my parents, my family, they're. The news is on, because they want to be kept. Kept up to date with, you know, what's happening, you know, what new restrictions there are, yada, yada, yada. But when you. When you think about it, I mean, if you're. We were following the rules, there really. There's nothing you need to know. You stay indoors, you do what you got to do. When it's okay, you peep your head back out, right? And I'm not downplaying the importance of that, but also we have to be conscious of what we consume, what we eat, not just in the sense of physical food, but also in the sense of what we take in through media, through books, everything. Because it all has effect on us psychologically. And so I was going to a store. I mean, the reason I'm on this podcast today is I wanted to share an experience. I had going to the store, I went to pick up some groceries. So the thought is that we're going to be indoors for maybe another month, maybe even more than that, maybe two months. So I went to pick up some supplies, went to pick up like a 20 pound bag of rice and some dried beans because I could live off, I could live off dried beans and rice for quite a while. And as I was going into walking around the store, it felt surreal seeing everybody wearing, you know, face masks, staying, you know, creating distance from themselves. And then I saw, even saw a friend in the food store and we were conversing. He was kind of getting you know, closer to me, violating that six foot rule. And, and I found myself getting anxious. And what I noticed was that like there was this separation, this fear even in conversing with another person, creating this distance. When I got to the cashier, I, you know, I put myself, I put my stuff onto the, onto the belt to be rung up. And then it kind of hit me, I was like, what is the mindset I'm in right now? Because where was. I wasn't even acknowledging the fact that there was someone to be grateful for. Someone who is literally there in the food store working and putting themselves at risk so that I can buy food so that I can go home and know that I have the provisions I need in order to get through this and they're putting themselves at risk. When I became aware of this, I stopped and I said, okay, you know what, I'm really grateful that they're here. You know, what's something I can, like, how can I make their day better? So I just asked, you know, because you don't really hear much conversation in the store when you're going through them. So I said, hey Anna. Because her name tag said Anna. I said, how are you today? And she went in, she was talking about how she got in at like 5 o' clock in the morning and she's still working. And it was about close to, I think 7 o' clock in the evening and she was still, she's been working all day. And I know this particular store, they had five employees call out because they had contracted the COVID 19. So it was forcing her to pick up more hours as a result of her co workers who were sick. And I acknowledged it and I said, you know, I want to say thank you, I appreciate you being here so that this way we can buy food and to get to this, I didn't say you're putting yourself at risk. Because I don't want to plant seeds and make worry. But I just wanted to show my appreciation for her being there for us. Because I think one of the things we fail to realize is just how you could look at these larger roles, say CEO of a major bank and all these other ones and think that they're providing so much value and deserve all this respect and attention. And we fail to acknowledge, we fail to recognize the person who is there providing a service for us in our food stores, in our gas stations, in our hospitals. These are the people who are shining right now. And when I left, I left the store and I just felt really grateful because I'm like, my God, you know, how I could have easily had just flown through that experience and completely ignored the fact that someone is that they're being of service and that they're putting themselves at risk for me. And it made me very present and made me feel peace in that moment. Because I'm like, you know what? I'm not going to sacrifice being human feeling these emotions, feeling gratitude because of a fear of what may potentially happen by interacting. Like, if I talk to this person, if I engaged that somehow, I'm going to contract like this. Covid19 and bring it home to my family. There's this fear. I was like, I'm not going to give in to that fear. I mean, I'll do my best to stay, but I'm not going to dehumanize. I'm not going to let that fear control my entire life and how I interact with people. So if there's anything, when you go to the photo, the reason I'm putting this out there is I want to just make you more conscious and also bring that sense of gratitude. As I started out, there is no, you know, there is no bad and good. There's bad and good, whatever it comes down to meaning. But life is balanced. Out of every bad, you can find good. And choosing to look for that good is a choice you have to make. You can choose to see that people are spending more time with their families, people are spending more time outdoors, people are having the opportunity now to work from home. This is likely going to change the entire way we do business. This is for some businesses to adapt and now to come online as a result of this, there's this whole new revenue stream. Maybe I'm not sure what kind of effect it's going to have on retail, but I know there's a lot of businesses that are going out of business, but I'm sure there's going to be a lot of people who are coming back in because retail prices are going to come down, people are going to be craving interaction, travel, doing all these things. So I. I believe that there's probably going to be a burst in like a boom in business after all this is cleared up. And it's also the awareness of how interconnected we are to one another. You know, like having productions in China and everything. How the connected and we rely so heavenly on everyone else, on the entire globe. We're intertwangled. There is nothing if someone hiccups in Germany. We feel it here too, right? That we are so interconnected. It's a beautiful thing because we see the humanity in one another. And when one person goes through a hardship like what's going on right now, we can empathize and we could put ourselves in those shoes and reach out for help. So, guys, thank you for tuning in. I just wanted to share that experience. I hope that this will in some way inspire you to just start looking for the beauty, looking for the light in all the different situations. Because it really is a choice. There's always an alternative method to focus. We just have to choose it. Guys, have a beautiful, beautiful day. I hope this finds you well. If you're in Fairfield county, it is a beautiful day outside. Get out and God bless and I will talk to you next week. Cheers.