What happens when all of a sudden you can no longer do what you are used to, what you are expected to, what you have to? Especially when this ‘all of a sudden’ really didn’t give you time to adapt or prepare!

That’s exactly how it went in Argentina. Now you were in one place and the next you had 4 hours get ready before the country went into total (total!) lockdown.

In Belgium things didn’t move this fast, thanks to the indecisiveness of our government, and the rules aren’t that strict, but still, in just a few days time many, not all, but a vast majority of people, was either working from home or put on technical unemployment, and all of sudden you find yourself at home, day in, day out, together with your closest family.

Day in, day out.

After 2 weeks in complete boredom in Argentina, where we were stuck in the house and couldn’t go out for walks nor to the food stores, where internet through our phones was so bad that it didn’t even allow video calls, where we couldn’t buy anything online to keep us busy, with no TV and no movies we could download, Belgium lock down seemed a treat to us. There is no place like home, where your family is, where your computer is, where work is, where you can find a zillion things to do. Where even spring cleaning seemed like fun!

Even though we work form home, there is still a lot of time to enjoy the situation, as nobody is stuck in traffic, no appointments, no meetings where we must go to. Everything is done from our home.

Time to eat all together -just the family of course-, to go for a walk in streets where for a change cars have been replaced by pedestrians and bikers -all at a safe distance-. There is no longer a rush hour, nobody rushes as even a visit to the supermarket takes time, and there is nothing to do at home anyway. No deadlines to be reached. The speed button of the whole world has been turned down. Life has become slow. Slower than during holidays even, where we want to see things, visit things, do things.

It’s time to reflect. Were we living in the right way? Was that speed necessary? Were these never ending long to do lists really needed? It’s now time to make a different to do list, of fun things that we never thought of because we didn’t have the time anyway. No time to make the list, no time to think of what we would really want to do, and not time to do those things either. Things for now, and for when life goes back to normal.

But, do we want life to become normal again? Do we want to go back to what it was?

It’s as if the reset button has been pushed, and we have to fill in the void. It’s challenging but at the same time it’s fun.