Breath Again: The sounds of recovery following ‘the pause of lockdown’.

What would you do if every day for the rest of your life you were given £86,400?

Guaranteed. 

In an increasingly, instant access world, this moment in history has woken most of us up to the fact that our most valuable commodity is our time, and our most precious asset is ourselves.  

Both of which we have either been giving away free or abusing greatly.

In a blink of an eye, society continued to hold its collective breath, to see if we really have flattened the curve, at least enough to give the scientists time to find a vaccine

The lockdown happened over a few weeks.  

But the lift is going to take months if not years.  

Where the virus killed, the lockdown saved many lives, but there was also a greater level of unintended, but as yet undefined harm that has been caused.  

As the scientists and the politicians start to work out the details of the lift,  society needs to think about how we remember and how we, as a society, learn the lesson of all of this.  To decide what we really want our present and future to look like. 

But this time has also been a magnifying glass on the inequalities of health, education and social justice.  

It has become a pressure cooker for protests, highlighting that while we may all have the same 86,400 seconds. 

But the environment into which we were born and the opportunities inherited from our ancestors, is definitely not equal.  

The ability to spend those seconds is not equitable.

Perhaps the greatest memorial of all would be for us to reset.  

To work out how we positively atone for the decisions of our ancestors, abuse and exploitation of our fellow humans and the planet.

So what do we think the legacy of all of this should be?  

How do we practically turn the new-found respect for all types of key workers, from a clap for careers into something fundamentally more practical and sustainable?