Can Ctrl Alt Delete be a new start for us?

The National Lockdown has started…again. At least there is some certainty beyond the tiers. Nevertheless, all these restrictions do also bring more human tears, tears from misunderstanding, that burden we carry for others. I wonder if there is another way, a new start perhaps. Do you recall a way on the computer of re-starting it? (Well on Windows PCs anyway). You use three fingers and press the Control, the Alt, and the Delete key. So by pressing can Ctrl-Alt-Delete be a new start for us?

Control

Control is a key word here. What do we control in life? In the past, in the Royal Air Force or in teaching, I felt that I had some control. However, in reality, that control was fleeting and depended heavily on the acquiescence of others. I wonder now whether the responsibility I thought I had was actually present. I have this picture on my desk.

So, if many of the things I see, feel, know about are not in my control, not under my responsibility, why do I feel crushed by them?

What if I acknowledged them? What if I was aware of them but didn’t accept the load on my shoulders? Perhaps then I could move…

Can Ctrl-Alt-Delete be a new start for us?

Alt

A key word in this pandemic has been ‘normality’. As a statistician I have used ‘normal’ for many decades. It doesn’t actually define the central value, the expected value but actually encompasses all possible values. Nevertheless, in the media we are driven to seek a “return to normality”, whatever normality may be.

Perhaps normality may be redefined post this pandemic. Perhaps we are permitted to seek out an alternative route, to become less traditional even. [That might mean the end to sprouts at Christmas – which gets my vote!]

Do we need permission to choose – and to choose is the only decision ‘power’ we have – an alternative solution? You have that permission.

It isn’t a case of Must do or Should do or could do, but you may choose.

Loosely attributed to HealthyMinds of Calderdale: Deborah and Tracy

Delete

As the years go by, we may collect a lot of ‘stuff’. And occasionally it all gets too much, perhaps the partner might insist at some point, and ‘stuff’ is thrown out or hopefully recycled.

What of in our lives? Could we delete some old practices that got so well entrenched into our psyche that they control us, rather than our being fee to choose what to do?

There are those ‘scripts’ which might annoy you. Not the ones on tragic TV sitcoms but the voices in our head that say “You are worthless”, “You can’t do this anymore”. They can be repeat – especially at 4am. But they are merely scripts, images of the past, not of the present. They do not and never will define you. You are of the present. So play some fresh scripts, drown the old scripts out with some music at 4am – be careful with your partner’s sleeping habits…but don’t listen to those scripts anymore. It’s time to delete them. Can Ctrl-Alt-Delete be a new start for us?

Ctrl-Alt-Delete

Three buttons pressed can change the life of the computer, and our life as well.

Jesus said that “I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance” (John 10:10). Perhaps this can be more than mere words but a reality. If we are aware of what is, and is not, our responsibility, there may be more time for that abundant living. Give thanks to God.

John the Baptist speaks a lot about repentance, which has overtones of dreary sermons that we are all wrong. Perhaps it means changing the way we do things? Perhaps it means looking for a fresh solution, an alternative to the usual one. Let’s break the mould.

Jesus also speaks that, with God, “if the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.” Perhaps deleting many of the practices of the past that hinder our opportunity to flourish, removing old scripts which do not apply will free us up, to be the person God intended us to be from the very start.

Go on, press Ctrl-Alt-Del now…in our life, not necessarily on your PC!