Hello to all the Shining Stars and families! This is Kat, a fellow Shining Star. In light of recent events I would like to help shine a positive light on aspects of this pandemic. The pandemic is very obviously already changing our daily life drastically and I believe it will have lasting effects, though positive ones. Though I don’t think the whole world is going to become a thousand times more rainbows and butterflies, there will still be growth in areas of our communities and individual lives.
This morning my family and I were once again talking about our supply of toilet paper (two partially used eight roll bags) and I thought of yet another joke! Humor is very helpful during this pandemic so let’s see if this works, maybe someone that’s not my family will get it, “This pandemic gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, ‘we’re going to play a game called four square’”... it’s about using only four squares of toilet paper...? Ya my parents didn’t laugh much either. Most of social media’s memes, posts and tweets are humorous all of a sudden! How grand is that!?! Personally, the ones I’ve found that aren’t necessarily humorous are simply trying to point out information we all need to have during this time, or why certain behaviors are not ok right now. Couldn’t social media be like this all the time? Couldn’t we share happy and funny things all the time? Do we need to talk down about people and politics, or could we share the funny joke that would lighten the gravity of situations? There will always be serious topics in the world, but humor takes effort too (apparently a lot on my part). However if we spend more time on humorous subjects, it might be more rewarding and progressive than spending that time on sad subjects.
From the internet: “Day 4 of social distancing: Struck up a conversation with a spider today. Seems nice. He’s a web designer.” Ha! A web designer! Us millennials can laugh at the pun and I’d wager the majority of us have said to ourselves “ya if all else fails I could probably make some money being a web designer”. Remember; if all else fails you are a strong surviving human being. I’d also like to remind everyone that you can do anything if you put your mind to it. So I’d cordially like to invite all the Gen-Xers and grandparents to think this way too, “If all else fails I can become a web designer” or an *insert profession here*. Speaking of generations, I’d like to point out that we Millennials do need guidance during this time too (whether we think so or not). Perspectives have always been the reason we are all different, and thus we need to respectfully listen to our elders too. Reach out to them, or hey teach your grandparents how to use Skype/Zoom etc.! Communities start at the family level and it’s beautiful to see communities remaining intact during these times. Because of the needed lockdown, four social groups of mine have moved completely online. While two of these groups won’t indefinitely stay online, I see them expanding events to online in the future as well. This makes me unbelievably happy! Think of how many more social groups will be available to those with mobility disabilities or even sight disabilities! This new access gets everyone more socialization and even for introverts, socialization does help our mental health. Right now we’re all taking a part in doing a super job of improving our own and each other’s mental health!
More humor; “Netflix please remove the ‘are you still watching?’ button. Yes we are still watching, we’re on the couch in quarantine watching shows for hours! Please replace with a ‘you’re going to eat that?’ message instead”. I’d finally like to encourage, when possible, looking at the brighter side of this pandemic in one more way; time. When was the last time you got this much time at home? The best part is you can do anything! Apart from cleaning you can read, pick up a language, or my favorite start a garden! I highly recommend looking up Victory Gardens btw! I was just listening to a talk show with someone saying that they’ll feel weird if they don’t gain some skill while on house lock down, that they’ll be at a party and someone will be playing the piano and they’ll ask “When did you learn to play the piano?” to which the new aficionado will say “During the corona outbreak early this year”. Wouldn’t gaining any skill be a wonderful thing for you? Remember you can do anything you set your mind to and you could even gain a new online community from learning this skill.
In essence we need to take this time to make things better, despite it being a hard shove, we can move the worlds towards a healthier community base and a more creative one. We all know we don’t have to be ok with coronavirus, just like we weren’t ok with cancer or our other life-threatening illnesses, but we certainly can show the rest of our communities how to take away the good things from a bad illness.
