For the majority of humans on plane earth, the last months have been challenging. Massive changes to our every day lives were forced on everyone in order to deal with a global pandemic. People are getting sick every day and the number of deaths at the time this is written is over 500,000. In order to keep one’s sanity, it is great to try and find the silver lining in the situation.

1. You get to have lunch every day with your spouse. How often do adults that work full time get to have lunch? Very rarely! But due to the virus, you and the misses are working from home which means that every day, at 12:00, you get to have lunch together.

2. You have not been jet lagged since March. Before the virus hit, you spent about 2 months being jet lagged this year and it looked like travel was going to be the theme for this year. This is the longest you have spent not being jet lagged since….2005?

3. You can ride your bike every weekend. Pre-SARS-CoV-19 you spent almost a weekend per month, if not more, traveling to or from somewhere. Often, these trips were back or from California which meant that you were in a pretty bad shape (see point 2 above) on the weekends. Since the lockdown started you are able to ride your bike every weekend. It’s truly amazing especially since the lockdown in Germany meant that one could still be sporty in public.

4. The air quality is great. Well…all that reduction in flying around the world is certainly looking to have a positive effect on our weather. The air is fantastic and nature seems to be having a really good year. If we can get some rain more often that will really be amazing (but not on the weekends please…see (3) for why).

Things will change, a vaccine will be found, and humanity will quickly forget what it was like to live under a global pandemic. However, not all memories will be negative. The list above will be a positive reminder.