When I let go of what I am,
I become what I might be."
-Lao Tzu
So: the finish line is in sight.
It felt like I could feel a collective sigh of relief from across the Commonwealth, echoing my own as I got news that the last of the Pandemic restrictions will be lifted come Memorial Day Weekend. We all have our lists of things we haven't been able to do in over a year, that we are dying to do again.
But I hope everyone also has a list of things that they want to do better.
The Pandemic forced us to do without a lot of things we took for granted. It shook up our routines and made us restructure the way we lived our lives. And that was a massive pain. But I would argue that it was also a good thing.
See, I have come to think of this whole experience, and in particular our emergence from it, as The Great Reset. In a post-Pandemic world, things I took for granted in 2019 will feel precious. Routines that were torn apart can be examined as they're put back together, with an eye on shedding the non-essentials.
That's certainly been the case with our Dojo Team. After being forced to deconstruct our old programs and teaching methods for distance learning, we've been looking at what we do in a whole new way. Innovations we came up with out of necessity ended up being worth adapting and keeping. The idea that we keep doing some things, just because that's the way things were always done, seems so... 2019.
As we return to all those things we've missed so much, let's also look for things that are worth leaving behind in the pre-Pandemic past. We don't have to go back to the old ways--or our old selves for that matter. The Great Reset leaves us with exciting possibilities.