I remember distinctly the day touch screens entered my reality. It was my junior year of high school and my boyfriend and I stood on the sidewalk in front of the school as the afternoon sun warmed our faces. We waited with a few other stragglers for our rides home.
“Apple is going to make a phone,” he told me. “It’s only going to have a screen and one button and you’ll use your finger on the screen.”
Impossible, I thought. How can you have a phone without buttons? I thought he was joking. The idea of a touch screen phone was so far out of the realm of possibility for me that I went home that day not able to fully wrap my head around what he was saying and still not fully believing him.
In June of the next year, Apple released their first iPhone.
What I didn’t realize was how drastically this invention would change history around the globe. I’m sure Steve Jobs foresaw it. As a 16-year-old high school student, I couldn’t. I couldn’t fathom a touch screen. I certainly couldn’t see the global affect it would have, or even the ways it would change my own life.
There have been other instances of change like this in my lifetime – the creation of the internet and 9/11, for example. I’m sure you can think of others in your lifetime and before it – the Civil Rights Movement, World War II, the Great Depression, the invention of the automobile.
These events (or periods of history) all have something in common – a catalyst that forever changed human history. The world as we know it is what it is because of those events.
The COVID-19 pandemic will be the same. It will change the fabric of our nation and our world.
These 2020 quarantine days in which we’re all homebound, homeschooling, working from home, working together to save lives and flatten the curve – these days will be in future generations’ history books. We have the unique opportunity of watching them unfold.
The funny thing about history is, we don’t usually know we’re making history until we’ve already made history.
In the 14th century, children didn’t know when they sang “Ring Around the Rosie” that their song would continue to be sung on playgrounds nearly 700 years later.
Anne Frank didn’t know when she journaled while in hiding that her words would be a treasured by millions of readers around the world.
What traditions of ours will be kept? What songs will be sung? What ways of life will we carry on for future generations?
Perhaps for us it will be the Teddy Bear Hunt that returns every March, a drastic increase of work-from-home jobs or homeschooling, or the strengthening of communities or family relationships that have long been forgotten in the busyness of life. We can’t predict what will stick.
Though I lived half of my life before touch screens, I find it difficult to remember life before them. I have memories of my childhood and high school when they weren’t around, but it’s hard for me to separate that reality from my present reality because they have been integrated into daily life for so long now.
Life as we know it is changing rapidly.
I challenge you to make a conscious effort to document this time in which you’re living in the middle of a history book.
Don’t know where to start? Here are a few ideas to get you going:
- This one seems obvious, but there are a lot of different avenues you can use to keep a journal. You can go old school with paper and a pen (my favorite journals are these Italian leather journals from Barnes & Noble), you can write a note in your phone, start a blog (WordPress is my favorite), or type in a Word document. I often find that typing is easier because I can type faster than I can write.
- Make a time capsule. This Time Capsule, created by LONG Creations, is a great way to get kids involved. (Or to fill out for yourself if you need a prompt to get you started.) You can also go the old fashioned route and bury a time capsule.
- Find a pen pal. Another great way to include your kids is by sending letters. Letters are invaluable because they effortlessly give a window into daily life, and they’ve been used to document history for thousands of years.
- If writing feels difficult for you, another way to document your life right now is with a vlog (video blog). Take videos of your kids, your daily life, record monologues of your emotions relating to what you’re going through, ask your kids questions about what they’re thinking, feeling, or learning.
I’m Hannah — a Seattle native and a mom to three spirited daughters. I love a good oat milk latte from Caffe Ladro, learning to skateboard with my 6-year-old, and exploring new parks with my best friend and partner, Matt. I’ve walked through hard seasons of divorce, single-parenting, and mental illness (in my kids and myself), but in the last couple years I’ve been redefining what it means for me to be a mom in my 30’s and how to find joy right here. (Hello, skateboard lessons and adult art class!) I didn’t expect much of anything about my life as it is now, but I’m learning to savor each moment. There is so much joy to be found here.
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