“We thought we were running away from the grown-ups and now we are the grown-ups.” 

Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

First there was the chaos, the disbelief, the no-time-to-think panic. The month during which everything changed in ways we could never have imagined changed so quickly that we could not keep up. Then there were the weeks and weeks in the house. Mourning the things we knew we loved. Mourning the things we hadn’t realised we loved. Feeling guilty for being okay.

Now we are in the most difficult phase of all. Going out. 

For the simple truth is, of course, that we cannot stay in the house forever. So we have to find a way to get back to life. Unfortunately we cannot return to “normal”. This is not a fixed thing that can be pinned safely in place on a road map that we can circle back to whenever we have had enough of exploring everywhere else. Time only moves in one direction. Just like characters in a Road Runner cartoon, we simply the paint the railroad in front of us as we go. Sometimes we are so many carriages back in the train that it seems that the path goes on forever. Carriage upon carriage stretches out before us. So many that they seem to touch the horizon. There is no chance of them running out anytime soon. Sometimes, however, we are balanced right on the front of the locomotive, desperately throwing out track, our arms a-blur, no time to think or plan. 

In either case someone is making decisions. Either us or someone else. Whether we are sweating at the front or enjoying a flat white whilst carefully spreading clotted cream on a fresh scone in first class, we have made a choice. The stock is rolling. The wheels are moving. The clock is ticking. There is no “do nothing” option. 

Stuck between four walls with those we chose (or did not, as the case may be) to share a carriage for months has been chastening. In the early days much of the track throwing was being done by someone else on our behalf. We gave them our consent to steer the train as best they could while we stood back because for the first time in several generations, there was no other choice. 

While we paced the living room, stared into space, tried to use our time well with varying degrees of success, the engine steadily trundled on through time and space. It could not stay still. That is not how life works. So now we are in a different place. We are not where we started out. The journey kept happening whether we were active participants or not. This is a very strange thought.

Not everyone has been reclining in their carriage of course. During these weeks and months when the word “unprecedented” has been uttered in every other sentence, some passengers have continued to help with the track throwing. Day and night they have hung on and kept us on the rails. Sometimes in the darkness. Sometimes through blood, sweat and tears. They are exhausted. 

Then there are the others. Those who did not make it all. Their journey is over. 

Now the train is stopping more frequently again and at every station we have to make decisions. Is it okay for us to nip out to stretch our legs? Do we have time? Or should we stay where we are? Is it the right time to take a risk?

It’s a very difficult call. And it’s made more difficult by our sheer numbers. There are simply too many of us. The conductor will not have time to visit every cabin and tell us what to do. We have to make up our own minds. This feels strange since we have lived more simply recently. But in reality nothing has really changed. Every single day when we swing our legs out of bed, whether we are in the midst of a pandemic or not, we decide whether we are going to throw down track today or whether we are going to let someone else do it on our behalf. Things are no different now. The decision is simply thrown into a sharper relief because of the bizarre set of circumstances in which we find ourselves.

Through accidents of birth or circumstance, or because of the exploitation of those stronger than themselves, some of us have no choice at all and are forced to lay track on someone else’s behalf. On the other hand, some of us have nothing but choice and still choose never to lay a finger tip on the door that leads out of the first class cabin, never mind coming within spitting distance of the engine room. Many of us are somewhere in between. 

If we are in a position to make a decision about how to spend our time, and make that choice, we immediately open ourselves up to criticism. The magnitude of criticism that is likely to be levelled at our door, perhaps rightly, is directly proportional to the degree to which we have chosen to speak for others or make decisions on their behalf. There is always someone else who would have made a different choice. There might even be a million people who might have made a different choice.

It is a characteristic of modern life that our air time has become consumed with dissecting the decisions that others have taken. It can be positive. It can lead to greater accountability. Bringing things to light that need to have the cleansing disinfectant of sunlight and exposure poured over them. But I suspect that for the most part, we enjoy it far too much. It is an inherently human trait to try to minimise our own insecurities and inadequacy by laying bare the faults of others. We can dress it up as whatever we like but it is too easy to be a back-seat driver these days. 

Throughout history there have always been whistleblowers, lone voices in the desert, prophets who rejected the status quo and asked the hard questions, who challenged the premise on which our liberty has been built. We are all the better for it. But they rarely did it without great personal cost. In fact they often lost absolutely everything in their quest. They certainly didn’t make a career out of it. No-one called them “influencers”. No-one gave them an advertising deal. They were much more likely to be hanged than to be given their own line of make-up to promote. 

The main problem with this endless round of dissection is that whilst it takes a lot of energy it does not result in a single piece of track being laid. In fact we can find that we have reached the next station, having spent the entire time since the last one, deciding whether or not the person in the next carriage should have gotten off or not, or whether indeed the train is going in the right direction, without ever having got down to the business of laying any track at all. It is all a massive distraction, the choice to make no choice, and it does not add one iota to the sum of human experience.

Laying down track on the other hand means productivity. Contribution. It is the choice of how we spend our time. Do we spend it being useful, being fruitful, trying to do something or do we spend it wastefully? Are we destructive? Are we wasteful or apathetic?

In the biblical story of the Prodigal Son, one son stays at home and tries to build on the inheritance that he knows will someday be his. The other cashes in his share and goes out into the world to live the high life until every penny has run out and he is forced to feed and live with the pigs to survive. He must decide whether to crawl home in disgrace or to continue to live in the consequences of his own misjudgement. In the end he returns to his family. He crawls home. His shame is so immense he can hardly bear it. He offers to work for his father as a servant, since his disgrace renders it impossible that he could ever be considered a son of the family once more. But his father is merciful. He offers him forgiveness and the chance to be called “son” once again. 

So far, so shocking, we might say. But there is more. The Prodigal Son is not simply welcomed quietly and with shame. Or forced to live humbly in order to pay the rightful price for his disgrace. No. His father kills the fatted calf and throws a lavish feast! 

The mercy we might begrudgingly admit is such that any decent father would give to their child in the same situation. But the party is thrown with grace. It is extra. It is undeserved. It is undignified. The truth is, it is hard to take. Where is the justice in grace such as this? The answer is, of course, none at all. Grace does not rely on justice. It operates outside of justice. “How can this be fair?” we cry. Until that very same grace is levelled at our shameful, undeserving door. And then, of course, we sing a different tune. 

We have been prodigal in the use of our time. Our money. Our resources and freedom. We have become distracted away from laying down track in such a way as to be giving and gracious, to be useful and loving, creative and caring. We have used our gifts and our advantages to cosy up our own luxurious carriage far far away from the engine room without much thought for those throwing down track at the front. 

But now for a short period in time we have been confronted with the consequences of our choice to make no choice. For the very briefest of moments, the veil between that which is temporal and that which is eternal has been lifted. We have been given the once in several generations opportunity to experience collective perspective. Perhaps too, in fact, we have even been granted a measure of grace in the midst of all this madness.

Like countless others, during lockdown my parents have been shielding in their home. They also live 40 miles away. There was a time, therefore, in the thick of things where 15 weeks passed without being able to see them. This was the longest period of my life that I have spent without sharing their company. Much like everyone else in the same circumstances or variations of them, I mourned them. Even though they were right there on the other end of the phone, I mourned them. There were still alive, healthy and well, but being prevented from seeing them against my will, and with no end in sight, it felt like I had lost them altogether. I knew there were so so many going through so much worse. But I could not help it. I fretted for them. I longed to see them. I thought about them every day. My heart ached.

Then finally came the longed-for day that I was able to go to see them again at last. I could not quite believe it. As I drove up the motorway that morning, the fields seemed more vividly green than I could ever remember. The sky more blue. The miles passed in a blur and before I knew it I was driving through my home town and then a few miles after that, along the country side road of my childhood. The familiarity of it all brought a lump to my throat. My hands shook as I held the steering wheel.

At last I rounded the final corner into their drive and there they were. Waiting. Alive and well and full of love and welcome. The very sight of them made me catch my breath in my chest. It was giddying. A bolt of something more full of life than anything I have ever experienced. Like being briefly dead and then being shocked into the land of the living once more. The paddle was pressed against my chest, an invisible finger pressed the reset button, and just like that, the sorrow was over. That which was lost – precious and mourned – was returned to me once more. 

In the last month I have thought about that moment often, trying to make sense of it. But I can’t. It seems almost unbelievable. Who gets that opportunity in life? How often do we get to try again at the things that are the most important? Never!

Since that fateful week, the “firsts” have continued, taking drives with the Beloved and Small One, buying an ice-cream or a coffee while we are out. Just this week we have been able to come to the North Coast to have a holiday. My eyes can hardly bear to look at the beauty of the views that I have missed so much. It is hard to take it in. 

It would be too too easy to put it all behind us. To forget that any of it ever happened at all. Certainly it has seemed stranger than fiction. An unsettling dream that we would rather put behind us. Even if this means that we forget the profound enormity of having lost something precious only to get it back again. Not to mention the sacrifices made by so many for the greater good. But the fact remains: some have lost, during this crisis, or another, that which they can never get back. The loss is permanent no matter how they might wish it were different. 

So while I am enjoying the taste of a really good latte again, the joy of being able to see friends and family, the simple pleasure of the smell of my favourite bookshop or the warm greenness of a nursery greenhouse full of trays of seedlings for sale, it would be my fervent prayer would be that I wouldn’t forget. That I will not sink into complacency. 

I hope that I will always be willing take my turn throwing out track. That I will remember to lend my shoulder to those who need it. That we as a society will take a break from dissecting each other and simply open our arms instead.

For there is no doubt that those of us who remain have been given a second chance. I have been given a second chance. This year I felt what it would be like to lose everything only to have it poured back into my arms in an embarrassment of riches.

The train never stops moving for anything. But this spring the clock jumped. Only for a beat. The very briefest of pauses. Just enough to try again. To learn something. To have the chance to do better next time. 

I hope I live it well. 

I hope we all do.