When the lockdown began back in March a joke circulated about a time traveler visiting us from the future. When told that he’d landed in the year 2020 he responds, “Oh wow, 2020, the first year of lockdown.” As the days have turned into weeks and the weeks into months this joke has become less and less funny. The world has been on pause for much longer than anyone had anticipated. Now, as we stare a sixth month of lockdown in the face with no real sense of when all this will end, and grieve what has been lost in lives, opportunity, and hope it is time to step back and consider the importance of flip flop and take advantage of this opportunity to live the flip flop life.
We need flip flops now more than ever before because our todays have become a blur of monotony during lockdown. What began as an almost fun global day of playing hooky turned first into days, then weeks and now months of lockdown. The novelty gone, the future uncertain, the very idea of normal at stake. We’ve grown tired of Zoom calls and have baked enough loaves of bread to supply a small bakery. The silver lining found in the joys of baking, crafting and time spent with families is real and will hopefully have a lasting impact.
“The world has been on pause for much longer than anyone had anticipated.”
The discovery that one can work in flip flops and remain “productive” whilst working from home will hopefully be the beginning of a new and cubicle-free normal. The proof that one is not limited to making a living based upon the available work within a 30-mile radius of the “home office” will likely open doors in places around the globe with talent that would have gone unnoticed in the pre-lockdown era.
We should be celebrating the death of the commute and the rise of the flip flop in daily life with the hope that this brings to both the earth and to humankind. The world truly is flat when it comes to human to human dependence and we are all connected more so now than we have ever been at any point in human history, and what can convey this connectiveness more so than the simple flip flop?
Though, through lockdown many are isolated, none of us is alone. However, because the world is locked down, normal seems a distant memory, life’s routines have been disrupted. Life in lockdown can feel very small. We’re all home more than not with few, if any visitors, and, perhaps, too much time with family. Because of this the lockdown has brought with it many doubts about the future.
“…life is best pursued in flip flops.”
Will we ever again travel? Will we ever again sway in a hammock pushed by a warm ocean breeze? Will we ever again taste the true freedom of long summer days packed with nothing to do and anywhere to go? The answer to each of these and all such questions is a resounding yes. Because, at its core the Flip Flop life is optimistic and is driven by the belief that people are more good than bad, life is to be savored and that the pursuit of happiness holds the key that unlocks life’s meaning. And the fact is, that life is best pursued in flip flops.
So, now more than ever, we need our flip flops. Not only because of what they are but because of what they represent, embody, and convey – hope. Hope and comfort that the pandemic will wane, lockdown will end and we will one day again stroll along a beach, drink in hand, the melodies of the perfect song for that moment wafting on the breeze, flip flops on our feet. Until then, Do Life Right – Flip Flop Daily.
