Spring is coming. The morning frost is still a thing in the parklands of Melbourne but now there are blossoms on the trees and some heat in the sun, when it comes out.

Yet the metaphorical sun is yet to break through Melbourne’s lockdown. There’s still a month to go before we learn whether the current restrictions have helped us to control the community-transmitted cases of COVID-19. One of the difficulties that many of us now face is the inability to plan and make decisions. Even New Zealand, a nation that successfully controlled coronavirus, has seen a return to stage three restrictions in Auckland following a mystery outbreak.

Sitting on the sofa with a tub of ice cream and Netflix until this is all over can help us get by moment-to-moment, but it won’t help us make a better lives for ourselves, our families and our communities throughout the rest of 2020 and into next year. This pandemic will be with us for the foreseeable future. It has changed the way we live and will live into the future.

With the loss of ‘old normal’ many of us are experiencing uncomfortable emotions. How can we plan for anything when there are so many unknowns? We have never known what will happen in three or six months time, but at least we were able to predict - with some degree of certainty - what it would look like. For example, we could book a holiday, set a wedding date, enrol in a course, move house. Now nothing is certain and that is disorienting, particularly if, like me, you are one of those people that like having control over your life.

Instead of focusing on what we can’t control, it’s time to shift our gaze to what we can control. I loved what Jennifer Garvey Berger had to say recently about the right time to plant the seeds for tomorrow: it’s right now. In a recent interview with Shane Parrish on the Knowledge Project, Garvey Berger said:

“The future is happening starting all around us right now. And so making sure to tend to those things that we care most about, those relationships as you say, but also those pockets of creativity, the weak signals of what we would like the world to look and feel like, to begin to nurture and grow a tomorrow that we want instead of grasping for the yesterday that’s gone, I think it’s a much healthier way of interacting with the world.”

When you put a frame like this around it, the question we should be asking becomes clear: “What can I do today, tomorrow and next week to plant seeds for tomorrow and my future?”

We are all in a perennial springtime, and while things might be frosty right now, it’s time to get planting.