If you want to know the value of one year, just ask a student who failed a course.
If you want to know the value of one month, ask a mother who gave birth to a premature baby.
If you want to know the value of one hour, ask the lovers waiting to meet.
If you want to know the value of one minute, ask the person who just missed the bus.
If you want to know the value of one second, ask the person who just escaped death in a car accident.
And if you want to know the value of one-hundredth of a second, ask the athlete who won silver in the Olympics.
Author unknown
No two hours are valued the same and neither are the activities that we choose to fill our time.
The nation has been in lockdown, and the stories of hope and the human spirit are as inspiring as the tales of loss are tragic.
All over the world, people are evaluating and adjusting.
If there is one thing that you can say of people, we have an amazing ability to adapt, and the transition to the new normal has been remarkably rapid for most.
Where we are not so smart, as a race, is learning from our mistakes and experiences after the event.
I think it was the German philosopher Georg Hegel who said, “The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history”. But maybe, this time, some of the lessons will sink in a little deeper.
What do you do with your allotted exercise time?
I do not know about you, but I have never seen so many people out running, powerwalking or cycling. Yes, there are not as many people around (thankfully most people are respecting the social distancing guidelines) but the ones that are outside all seem to be on the move.
Perhaps it is because the gym is closed or their regular exercise class is no longer an option: but it seems that people suddenly value the importance of their exercise hour.
It may be driven by the necessity of maintaining mental health – being cooped up indoors with those you love the most in the whole world can be a challenge.
Or your daily scan of the scales is telling you there is a need to offset the extra snacking while the family gathers around Netflix and Zoom.
Maybe it is a case of the Government has said you ‘can’ exercise once a day, so you are using the opportunity to get some fresh air.
Will you continue when the time and opportunity are less precious?
There will come a time (hopefully weeks rather than months away) when the freedoms that we’ve taken for granted are returned to us. It will probably a partial loosening of the lockdown to start with, but eventually, we will be back to normal – or back to a new type of normal (whatever form that takes).
But we will be free to exercise as little or as much as we please.
There will be no limitation on time we can spend outdoors with friends, family, or a stranger you happen to start a conversation with while walking in the park.
Will you continue to value your opportunity to exercise?
Or will it become a lesson learned, forgotten and left in the back of our mind with all the other stuff that we really should be doing – if only we had the time?