What if, lockdown-nostalgic then, we notice that those lockdown times even taught and showed us things about ourselves, perhaps even big things about life, for which we are grateful?

Sensing that this is likely to be the case for fortunate Canberrans I have been trespassing the internet to look for the lockdown-appreciative experiences of others in the wider world beyond our federal capital bubble.

The Irish Times bade a reporter sally forth as the end of a lockdown loomed to ask the Dubliner in the street if there were things about the late lockdown he or she would miss when normalcy was restored. The piece makes for very poignant reading.

Perhaps when this city's lockdown is unlocking The Canberra Times, always alert to Canberra's parochial poignancies will send a reporter out to similarly hunt and gather Canberrans' thoughts.

"I've learned I'm an introvert at heart, and that that's OK," one Dublin man testified.

"[I've learned that] I'm happy in my own company and I'm quite self-sufficient. I enjoyed the slower pace, it gave me a chance to reconnect with myself ... overall it has been a positive time for me," the newly self-aware Dubliner confided.

A woman told the Times reporter "I have learned my needs are pretty simple. I don't need the latest fast fashion fix. I don't need to run to the hairdressers every week. I have discovered hill walking within a 5km radius of my home, which I didn't even know existed. I've learned to slow down. To appreciate the little things, and to listen to my kids. I've learned to bake bread and to live in the moment. I will miss the lockdown days. I feel the treadmill beginning to turn again, and I just want to press 'hold'."

Another emerging-from-lockdown Dubliner confessed that she was going to "miss the fluidity of time".

"I will miss the mindset that didn't change the batteries in the kitchen clock because there was no pressing need to I will miss the slow pace of lockdown life. We have been lucky, tragedy did not hit us. I am in the privileged position to view this time in a benign way. My usual worries were laid to rest for a while. The batteries will have to go back into the clock soon."

One recurring theme among the interviewed Dubliners was that they'd liked the way in which, during lockdown, there'd been a special we're-all-in-this-together kindliness in people's dealings with one another.

Is this same shy magic at work among Canberrans at the moment?

As lockdown lifted in the Big Apple New Yorker feature writer Nick Paumgarten reminisced that while overall the lockdown had been grotesque, "there were small graces."

For him these small graces had included "unforeseen time with kids both young and old (on balance, you hope, more blessing than curse, in spite of the slog of remote schooling) and some cultivating of better habits (if only to counterbalance the entrenchment of the bad ones)".

"[Also] the telescoping of one's social universe ... imposed a culling of acquaintances and friends, which brought to mind [organising, de-cluttering guru] Marie Kondo's advice for weeding out a closet: 'Get rid of it, unless it brings you joy'."

Also for The New Yorker Rebecca Mead has written a ripper piece "The Unexpected Beauty Of Covid Hair", an essay luxuriantly illustrated with Elinor Carucci's swish photographs of women being proudly, triumphantly, openly grey-haired. These New Yorkers, unable to see their hairdressers during lockdown and finding their greyness coming through, chose to embrace, love and celebrate the greyness that hairdressers had hitherto so artfully/artificially disguised. The interviewed women all sound so rapturously liberated.

"For years," Rebecca Mead writes, "Devery Doleman had her hair professionally coloured once a month.

"But when pandemic shuttered her salon, Doleman watched with a different kind of interest as her roots grew out ... She decided to preserve a streak of grey. Photographed by Elinor Carucci the silver flows from Doleman's brow like a trickle of liquid mercury. 'I would never have gotten to see what was underneath if there hadn't been this forced interruption,' she said."

Mead continues that "If you were among the lucky and the relatively unscathed, COVID was a pause - a time for reflection (not just in the mirror of Zoom) even a time for growth (not just of unsightly roots). For Sausan Machari, who is 42, letting her abundant hair return to its natural colouration was part of a larger process of change. 'Before Covid, especially in New York, we were always planning. Now it's about getting comfortable with the flux and riding the wave wherever it may go,' she feels."

READ MORE IAN WARDEN:

Yes, even though not all of us have abundant hair to liberate I invoke these silver-maned women as lockdown models for us. Perhaps they and their hair adventures are a parable for all of us.

The abrupt disruptions of lockdown bring us, out of necessity, exhilarating opportunities to invent changes to how we look and live.

One doubts there is a single Canberran who is not, in this lockdown, making adaptations, getting comfortable with the flux, learning to ride the present wave wherever it may go.