This is what I think the next 18 months is going to be like: an extended ride on a merry go round of anxiety and hilarity, interspersed by bouts of boredom and frustration. Because whatever we would all prefer to believe, there’s no proven and tested vaccine yet discovered that can provide immunity to COVID-19.
The numbers of infected who are (or not) tested or diagnosed, who die or recover, whose contacts can be traced or not traced, rise and fall like tides, and as we navigate these waves of lockdown and opening up, in defiance or in caution, tied to the ebb and flow of statistics, the fears we each have of falling ill ourselves don’t subside. But there’s a pattern to them, which we can learn to discern.
However exceptional we think we are, and however intelligent and protected by our research and our scepticism, if we are human we are susceptible to this illness, either as victims or as carriers. And whether it was man-made as a biological weapon, or developed from defrosting glaciers due to climate change, it seems to be virulently contagious. And even if we do develop immunity, how long will it last? Because viruses mutate.
It is ironic that, even as many actual orchestrations are being exposed, corruption and exploitation and gross pyramid schemes of fraud and human trafficking, the citizenry of countries everywhere are quarreling about personal protective gear - to mask or not to mask? And what kind of mask is effective? Or what kind is a mere token gesture? As symbols of our personal freedom or civic awareness, and the pivotal friction between them.
Beautiful masks
I applaud the people who have chosen to self-manufacture beautiful masks, as fashion statements, and in many colours, with empowering slogans embossed or embroidered on them, to accessorise and personalise their defensive armour of choice. It’s on the principle of ‘the spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down’. It normalises this extraordinary rapid shift in our sense of apprehension, our calculated chances of personal survival, and the dangers of our newly minted world.
Many of us did not know until now what crackpot beliefs many of our oldest friends have privately held. Survival mode removes the masks of civility, if they were just a surface pretence. We gaze in amazement at the non-mask activist people who express their conflictedness about this perceived insult to their liberty by choosing not to cover their noses, but just their mouths, as they perambulate about. Apparently the people most likely to pass on any contagious virus to us are the people we engage with, for the most extended period, and with the most prolonged close contact. In other words, our little family pods. No overnight guests, no unexplained absences.
Survive to see 2022?
How can people who so enjoy their liberty, and the freedom to go wherever they please, voluntarily choose to shelter at home? Is it possible that we can all survive to see New Year 2022? Will we be having our restaurant meals and drinks and bites outdoors in the sun and the air, growing our own vegetables, minimising salon visits and avoiding crowds like chronic misanthropes? Is that the cost we are required to pay? Intermittent social retraction?
I believe many of us, apart from the fear factor which adds layers of stress to every dental checkup and visit to the doctor, may have found that our lives have improved: we have much less interpersonal stress because we don’t see so many people; we are more attune to our natural desires and aversions; we are more elastic with our waistbands and our deadlines; we have the time to actually relish what we read or watch, instead of being continually interrupted; we have the opportunity to develop and enjoy our home life instead of seeing it as a brief backdrop before collapsing into exhausted sleep at night.
Everything I have just said is only the case if we have not lost our jobs, or experienced an industry downturn which has affected us and our family, and caused us to lose income, and security, and sleep. We have discovered how close we all are to a line which has become the measure of our basic comfort, and which we must not be forced to cross.
Our vulnerabilities and areas of concern are clearer to us than ever before. No concealment is now possible from ourselves. What do we want to save? Who is most precious to us? What are our natural affinities, and highest priorities? Each day these questions are asked, and answered, in the choices we make.
When the music stops: when the case numbers rise, and lockdown is declared for the good of the nation, as it will be in every country throughout the world, from time to time until it becomes a regular pattern, until the vaccine is found and made accessible to all, will our homes be places of actual shelter and solace?
Or will we be scrambling for survival, and seeking protection and space from the people we share lockdown with? If home is truly where our heart is, then the travel ban is not so hard to bear. We will emerge, and rise up, and fly to other places again.
Our busy, hyper-productive work-centered lifestyles have masked and veiled these realities from us. Until now. Each person chooses the pace of their adjustment to the new game of survival which was declared this year, and we each face the end of the music in our own way. It’s hard to bear, at times, but I believe all of us are actually learning how to go with it, the ebb and flow, and let go of what becomes less important as the cycle goes on.
The best way to predict or prophesy the future is to act now, one step a day, to create it. If we do that, instead of grasping at ineffective, damaging or counterproductive stop gap measures, or vainly trying to do things for show, time itself will befriend us. It’s a different season we’re in, that’s all. A new era is in our midst, and it’s not water or air that is our greatest resource: it’s Time, and like every valuable resource, it should be earned and must be used well. If we waste it, it will surely waste us, in return.
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