hammer 3 day 1

So one year ago on the last day before the first lockdown I was in a grocery store grabbing what was left from mostly empty shelves.   One year later I spent it trying to get a leaving present to a co-worker.

He had been with the company for over twenty years and decided, simply, to do something else. Despite his discrete nature you could tell he came from certain stock, a certain upbringing.  So it made sense when one day it came out that I had been sitting next to a true Parisian born and raised in the 18^th.  Despite living and working in the Paris region knowing a true Parisians is rare.  People in Paris, like a lot of metropolitan cities, usually come from somewhere else.

He had already taken a sabbatical year and came back in the mist of the pandemic and everyone was working from home and this would be how he would leave; saying his goodbye into his computer screen after having spent nearly half of his life at the company. 

So here I was walking on the last day of winter, sunny and cold, to deliver his parting gift.  I hadn’t planned to go that day but with the announcement of the third lockdown opportunities to see people in the immediate future became suddenly slim.  I thought about the consultants who had left or the co-workers who had retired in the last year and how we had made plans to properly say goodbye “when this would be over”.  One year later it’s still not over and we still don’t know when it will be or what “being over” even means.   

What I do know is that if you have an opportunity to do something today, do it.  Who knows what tomorrow brings.