WEYBURN: One of the lessons I hope we’ve all learned from the two years of the COVID-19 pandemic is not to take anything for granted.
This includes one’s own family and circle of friends, but it also includes the wider community, and the events in the community that help to bring us together to celebrate and enjoy life.
The reason is simply that, firstly, no one saw the pandemic coming and didn’t know it would impact us worldwide the way it did.
And secondly, the fun events of summer, and put on by and for the community, matter. They might seem frivolous to some compared to the normal demands of life and business, but they’re really not.
Take these last two or three weeks as an example. We had the Weyburn Chamber’s summer parade, and we celebrated with the Young Fellows Club the occasion of their centennial, followed by Canada’s birthday.
This was followed by the Weyburn Regional 4-H Show, and the Weyburn Fair, and then this past weekend, it was Creelman’s turn for the “Biggest Little Fair” in Saskatchewan, for the first time since 2019.
Taking just these events, none of them were possible during the pandemic. It can be debated if that was really a necessary move, but it’s a part of our history now, and hopefully we can move forward and react better should something like this ever occur again.
My biggest single issue out of all the restrictions and lockdowns is our mental health was never part of the equation.
If anything can be shown from these events over the last few weeks, it’s that you cannot underestimate the importance of mental health. All of these events were important to the people who organized them, and those who attended and took part in them – and the worth to each person in bolstering their mental health cannot be measured. Thus, as we move forward and get on with our lives once again, we should keep some balance in our lives.
Beyond our mental health, I go back to my first point about not taking anything, or anyone, for granted. We used to take part in all of these things in the years before, but now we should savour and enjoy them, because you can’t take for granted that they’ll always be there.
