Safe at Home – But Without The Pressure to Do It All

Even though I wrote a book about The Home, my company is based on the Home and my vocational path helps people make the connections between themselves and Home, I’ve agonized with writing a blog post during this time. One might say I certainly have a captive and potentially receptive audience now since the entire world is hunkered down in their homes with more time to read, pay attention to their homes and make the connections between self and space. I’ve taught and written about this for years. It’s my specialty. Recently, I’ve heard from friends, students and customers asking me when I’d be running a seminar, a zoom class, an IGTV post or an online course. “This is what you are known for!” one friend said. A student of mine texted me and said ” You help people make the connections between their space and their challenges. We could use an online Feng Shui class.” I know with certainty that I could rattle off a top ten list of meaty tips that are not the usual re-treaded fodder for elevating the energy of your space and making transformational changes to support your wellbeing during this strange and scary time. Now is the perfect time, right?  Well, I can’t.

At first staying home felt like a vacation of privilege to me and I felt guilty about that. I’m able to safely stay in, while countless frontline responders are risking their lives trying to save so many people who are dying. Then I began to think about all those who are struggling to get by, whether its because they lost their jobs or they are in the throws of the virus itself  – or both – and how tone deaf a post about moving your furniture around would be. Then, after two more weeks passed, social media viewing made it worse. Personally, I’ve grown tired of all the endless posts of  people dancing, working out, cooking or telling us how we should be cleaning, reading and organizing right now. Who cares. I don’t find it inspiring to see you do your push ups or find it cute when your family is performing a dance routine. Believe me, I see the value in it all. I know for some people it is keeping them busy, moving, and feeling productive. It’s a source to focus their attention and that can be really valuable during these uncertain, scary times. But being bombarded with what you should be doing right now in order to make the most of your time, can add to more stress and anxiety. I don’t want to be that person. 

We keep hearing about how these times can bring families together. But what if the close quarters, unemployment, health struggles, financial worries or uncertainties of the future are making relationships worse? Pressures to feel supreme gratitude for this opportunity may leave you feeling substandard. Will cleaning out a junk drawer be the answer? Not sure. Is engaging in Facebook challenges just because everyone else seems to be doing it adding to pressure to perform and keep a happy face? What if instead of having lists everyday of Things to Learn or Projects to Do or Recipies to Make, you just use this time to let yourself be? No pressure. If you feel like baking bread and learning Italian, go right ahead. But if you’d rather be still, reflect, engage in long talks with your loved ones, tackle tasks at your own pace and just allow yourself to go through whatever emotions you are feeling without added measures of competitive productivity by constantly doing, performing, accomplishing, posting, or worse, telling others what they should be doing at this time, then do that. You certainly don’t need me to tell you what you should be doing now, gentle soul. Right now, you need to do what’s best for you without feeling pressure that this is your golden opportunity to come out changed.  That is going to happen, regardless.