Pandemic Prompts For Your Grandparents Journal

This post is a direct result of the jump in numbers of a past post.  A kind of addendum if you please. So, if you choose not to read this don’t worry. I will be back next week with something along the usual lines.  

Are you getting along with your pandemic?

You see, here’s the thing, this pandemic is not the same for all of us. It neither treats us all the same nor do we react to it in the same manner. What does appear to be similar is we are all missing someone or something.

Who are you missing?

Everyone I know misses someone. I see it when I go to the grocery store. People talk to strangers behind a mask as if they are long lost friends, I miss my grandson Nathanial. This brings me to my real focus. Ideas you may want to integrate into your Grandparent’s Journal. I will place the link at the end of this post to one I wrote in October 2019 giving how and why reasons for you to leave a journal for your grandchildren.

What do you miss?

Out of the home entertainments and activities being considered unsafe at this time find many people spending their time differently than they had in the past. For some, new hobbies are coping mechanisms to battle the loneliness they feel. While others see this time as their chance to take up something, they may have felt they hadn’t the time to do until now.

“Love is the greatest gift that one generation can leave to another.”

— Richard Garnett

Leave your thoughts behind.

When this situation has finally become a thing of the past, there is no doubt that one of the questions people will want to know from one another, is “what did you do to pass the time?”

I had asked my Gram about the Spanish Flu pandemic. She was a young girl of 10-12 years old then. But she had no real answers for me other than they were lucky. They lived out in the country and seldom saw anyone.

So, I thought about some of the questions I should have asked her and turned them into journal prompts. These will make an interesting addition to your Grandparents Journal or to the journal you keep for yourself.

10 Pandemic prompts.

1 | How has the pandemic altered my day-to-day life?

2 | How has the pandemic changed the way I work?

3 | What has become more difficult to do now?

4 | What has become easier to do now?

5 | What do I miss the most due to the pandemic?

6 | What do I miss the least due to the pandemic?

7 | I have begun a new hobby and it is ______.

8 | How has the pandemic changed the people in my life?

9 | What precautions have I taken in my environment to keep myself safe?

10 | What am I grateful for, especially in these abnormal circumstances?

My final thought

I hope to come out on the other side of this pandemic and like my Gram I want to feel able to say, we were fortunate. In the meantime, some of the silly or seemingly insignificant things that get left out of the phone calls to my grandson have been included in my grandparent’s journal.

Here is the link to What Is A Grandparent’s Journal

I hope you enjoyed this short post. Please share it with your family and friends.

Don’t Allow Events To Steal Your Joy

The joy in you not the times

If you are like everyone else, you will have events in your life when things are just not going your way. The truth is life is a constant wave of emotional highs and lows.

So much of our time is spent on an even keel, mundane state of emotional blandness, interrupted by the peaks of the best of times and unfortunately, the valleys when nothing seems to go right.

Few if anyone searches for information on how to deal with the best moments of their lives. They ride the wave. Then, finding that handling the lows can be a difficult task they bemoan their fate. Today we live in very troubled times, a pandemic has taken over most of the world, and people are being affected in many profound and unexpected ways.

Everything surrounding this pandemic is based on suffering and pain, it is just the nature of the beast. Death, isolation, fear, facing the unknown and grief and loss can strip of us our joy and may lead to depression.

We cannot control what happens outside our door, what we CAN control is ourselves and how we react. There are things we can do to maintain a positive and even joyful mindset.

In the following discussion, let’s talk about three methods for doing just that.

Having the right people around you

How often have you heard it said that you are the total of the five people you surround yourselves with most frequently. If that is the case, you must make sure you have the right people around you. Especially, when going through a difficult time, it is critical to hang on to your joy. At times, when life is beating you up, retreating into the solitude of your home, wanting to throw the covers of your head, and be left alone with your thoughts, can feel like the best option.

Make no mistake; sometimes periods of solitude are healthy and necessary. Right now, isolating yourself is the norm as we fight this health crisis. However, when you discover yourself at a low point, robbed of your joy, connecting with those who make you happy is imperative.

Although it may seem obvious, avoiding people who have the opposite effect can sometimes be the real battle. Negative people are especially important to keep out of your life when you are already struggling to find joy in your current situation.

You can maintain connections during Shelter in Place orders when you are isolating at home to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Technology has seen to that.

·         Face Time on iPhones and Video calls on Android

·         Skype

·         A simple phone call

·         Email

·         Text

·         Zoom and other video conferencing software can bring together friends and family while staying safe and following health official’s orders.

·         Good old-fashioned letter writing

Remember it can’t rain forever

Nothing in life is permanent. Fortunately, nothing in life is permanent! Let’s state that again, this will pass.

Into every life, some rain must fall. Later the sun shines bright and hot. During periods of extreme highs and lows, thinking about the temporary nature of each season in life is not comfortable to dwell on.

On the contrary, keeping this truth in mind during low times can be beneficial. Whatever you are going through, no matter how bad it may be, it WILL pass.

Most of the difficult times you experience in life conclude without any extra effort on your part. It is so easy to embrace the mentality that you must put forth an immense amount of effort to make something bad go away.

Even though this is sometimes the case, most of the time, TIME is the only remedy for tough situations. If you want to increase your joy during difficult times, remember that your situation is not the way things are, only the way they are RIGHT NOW.

“Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.”

— Henri Nouwen

Choose to be joyful

Since we have discussed how life is divided into highs and lows and the fact that nothing will last forever, this leads to one last thing to keep in mind during the best AND the worst periods.

If you want to have joy consistently, your joy absolutely cannot be dictated by your circumstances.

If you let every good thing that happens to you leave you soaring on cloud nine and every negative situation send you crashing to earth, you will go through life in a state of emotional exhaustion! Stable, consistent, sustainable joy can only be created and found within yourself.

Life is far less about what happens to you than it is how you react to it. You are in charge of how you feel. Don’t fall into the trap of letting joy go to your head and disappointment to your heart.

My final thought

Adverse situations are a part of every life. Do Not allow it to rob you of the joy that should be yours. Try affirming to yourself every day, “today, I choose to feel joy in my life.”

I hope you have found this post to be beneficial. Please share it with your family and friends.