“We Are Between Two Times”
What the Pandemic Means for the Rest of Our Lives
This is the second entry examining responses to a survey in 730DC asking readers about their experience of the pandemic. This entry focuses less on reopening and more on the personal experience of the pandemic and its meaning. Read the first entry here.
It is hard to think about a way to write about what the pandemic has done to those of us who survive without feeling as if it might be an insult to those who did not. So let’s start there: This viral scourge leaves Washington numbering 1,141 fewer as of July 4, 2021.
Given the yearlong anxiety perhaps to some 1,141 will seem like a bargain. It is not, first because it is a decade of murder all at once. It is the Pentagon plane crash twenty times over. It is the crowd at a moderately well-attended A-10 conference game at George Washington University’s Charles E. Smith Arena, vanished.
It is also not a bargain because we were in fact ripped off, over and over, by leaders of all ilks, who told us we were safe, and that even if we weren’t, the show must go on. The pandemic could have been stopped, whether in China or at the border, or at least contained, and if it had been taken seriously from the start our number might be greater. Once it was here, the 1,141 dead very often caught sick while working jobs whose exploitative nature was papered over with the label of “essentiality,” and when they were sick they feared for the cost of treatment, or their bodies were wracked by “preexisting conditions” the result of lives of hard toil and environmental neglect, or queued in hospitals overwhelmed by decades of poor investment and policy. Fifty-one percent of our cases were in African-American Washingtonians, and twenty percent in Hispanic Washingtonians.
I have no idea of whether any of our readers were among the 1,141. I’ve thought about the odds and turned away before I got too far into the math. (Our previous survey suggested 5–10% of readers contracted COVID.) I hope they weren’t, but, COVID is not something I would wish on anyone. These 1,141 — may the number stay there, though almost certainly it will not; the pandemic is not over, we are keen enough to know “pan” means “everywhere” and that, as varied as our eight wards are, they are not the earth — are gone irrevocably. What do they leave in their wake?
As important as it is to center those who lost everything, it’s also true that almost everyone lost something this past year. Finding space to mourn these losses can be hard, given the totality of what others lost, but it is nonetheless important. A year of flirting in school hallways, growing chance friendships, dancing in bars and playing pickup basketball with strangers — these are not life itself, but they are the stuff of life.
When asked, most people agreed that COVID-19 had changed their daily lives.
These impacts were seen to be both medical and social/economic — with a slight tilt towards the latter. Sometimes they converged — one restaurant worker said “it was a very scary time and in the end, the corporate nature of the company showed its true colors and they only cared about their money.”
We also asked about how the pandemic had shifted respondents’ attitudes towards important institutions that shape our lives, like jobs, governments and families. In general, households were deemed to fare best — these bubbles our final bulwark against contagion, the individuals we had to trust most closely. Employers were close behind — this could have to do with the relatively stable and white-collar work that predominates in 730DC readers compared to national populations. On the other hand, faith in society and the government to handle crisis were generally diminished, the govenrment most devastatingly — a full quarter of respondents have effectively lost hope in it as their protector in dire times.
For some, the fact that the pandemic could have been a chance for these institutions to shine made it all the more disheartening when they didn’t. We didn’t ask about faith institutions specifically, but one respondent cuttingly wrote, “I knew this country was selfish but I didn’t realize how much. I’m Catholic and I’m taught to sacrifice to help those in need, to love they neighbor. How can any, especially Christians, not do the bare minimum of wearing a mask to help each other? How can people be so uncaring, unkind?”
Another: “Our common life together was broken, our culture poisoned by accumulation, comparison, competition, and performance. The pandemic arrested some of that, for a time. And yet here we are, beginning to snap back into old rhythms and routines.”
Individuals found that they themselves handled the crisis better than expected. Individuals’ trust in themselves — self-reliance, personal resilience, grit, whatever you want to call it — mirrored their trust in their household. This seems both encouraging (we’re glad you believe in yourselves!) and also a horrific conclusion given the number of crises we face whose solutions require collective and social action. In the best instances, individuals and community came together to find strength in one another: “The pandemic stretched me beyond my wildest imagination. I found parts of my voice I never knew I had, I found more strength and compassion, I found love. I opened up myself to care for and be cared for by my community.”
This personal resilience is particularly admirable, though, in the face of what appears to have been widespread dismay throughout the past year. (I myself have become acquainted with the phrase “situational depression” to describe lingering anomie that is essentially external in origin.) More than two-thirds of people said they were more unhappy than usual, with a fifth claiming the mantle of “much more unhappy.” (We do not judge but envy those fraction who gained in happiness, but they were much not the majority.)
The whole thing was disorienting, let’s admit that. “I don’t even know who I am anymore,” read one brief comment on our survey. It was also exhausting, isolating, and harshly inequal in impact. When it comes to happiness, we are all tied together: “People treating as an inconvenience what affected us significantly (and affected others much more profoundly) has been jarring and off-putting, and has harmed my faith in others’ capacity for empathy,” wrote one person. Wrote another, “I find myself unable to fully enjoy the return to normal social life because among other things I feel serious survivor’s guilt.”
Where do we go from here? Apparently not to normal. While a return to semi-normalcy was the mode — I imagine folks are thinking of booster shots and the occasional travel prohibition — a total return to normalcy was the least common response when we asked if “life will go back to normal.” Perhaps more significantly, very few people say that their lives will continue on the same path that they were on before. “Life will mostly go back to “normal”, but I don’t think we, as people, will ever be the same,” said one respondent, with many also recognizing that “normal wasn’t working” and hoping that the pandemic will prompt different choices and values in our society.
This last question is perhaps my favorite one to ponder, because it is value-neutral. A change in life’s direction can be good or bad — it is what you make of it that matters. And many people are trying to make the best of it: “By having life slow down in so many ways over the last year, it became easier for me to see the paths I want to take going forward. It caused me to change jobs, my living situation, and end a relationship that was no longer benefitting me.”
I have always been interested in the concept of life-history — how do people make sense out of their lives? To telescope Marx’s famous formulation from the historical to the personal, we make our lives, but not under circumstances of our choosing. The pandemic, as the War on Terror and the climate crisis before it, have punctured whatever remained of the cushy illusion that cosseted my Millennial American upbringing, that history is over.
We were done with history, but history was not done with us. It is a sad solace, reading these surveys, to understand the cost of this coming-to-the-senses — if we even have that. As many respondents pointed out, we are in danger of “snapping back” to normal, and it is up to us to refuse the realism capitalism inscribes upon society, just as we should have refused to allow the pandemic to become genocidal: “We easily foresaw how structural inequality, primarily along racial and economic lines, were creating a tinderbox that the coronavirus would ignite, and we just sat here and waited to be immolated, because our national and regional leaders knew that they would not be the ones to suffer,” wrote one survey-taker.
“We have endured a global tragedy together, and I firmly beleive we need time to grieve and acknowledge what has happened,” said another respondent.
When Arundhati Roy wrote early on that “the pandemic is a portal,” she had in mind all number of possibilities, some of them grim. But not all of them. For those of us who step out from this portal — perhaps not on an other side, but nevertheless transformed — we might yet find redemption in these changes, to balance out the depressions and devastation of this lost year. Perhaps, with faith in our own ability to handle crisis intact, we might now see and tend to the need to rebuild our institutions to better care for our people, knowing that there is more to come.
Below, we share words submitted by readers, who are always our greatest resource, and whose contemplations are worthy of your perusal. N=63. Entries are separated by paragraph breaks and have not been edited in any way to preserve their archival quality.
Working all of 2020 as a manager for a corporate restaurant was physically and mentally exhausting. We never closed and I worked the whole time. While lucky to be employed, it was a very scary time and in the end, the corporate nature of the company showed its true colors and they only cared about their money. While personally I was extremely safe and cautious both at work and at home, my employer didn’t take much interest in safety. It was very scary and very mentally draining. I now have a new job where the owners are kind, caring, and extremely cautious. After a year of playing by the rules and having both the pandemic and my employer take a toll on my mental health, I am happy to now be fully vaccinated and be in a much better work environment. I will also be playing by the new rules where I can see friends inside without masks and enjoy dates out at restaurants and bars with my wife without a mask!
My mental health took a hit but I have a clearer sense of direction than I did before the pandemic. As things ease back to “normal”, I am grateful that I did not make many life altering decisions while in the dark place of the past year. I am wondering how those who chose to move/relocate/pursue serious relationships are feeling now that familiar activities are returning.
Peak COVID was horrible for many reasons. Constant vigilance, fear, uncertainty, grief. This blurb is not about that, but rather is about the flip side. If anything, I appreciated the no-FOMO element of the pandemic and hope i can hold on to that. I was also happy to break from the rush: no commuting, socializing, working, exercising, etc. To just stop in my tracks was at once distressing and a relief — but ultimately I don’t want to go back to how things were. At home life was simpler, calmer, less pulls in 100 directions. (I fully recognize that my ability to say this reflects my privileged position as a childless, job/finance secure, healthy individual.) I also wonder if the pandemic aged me socially? Or just brought out my inner introvert? I feel fulfillment in quieter things, appreciate nature even more (who knew that was possible) and while I have missed the thrum of urban nightlife I realize I don’t need it as much as I thought I did. Last, in some ways the pandemic actually brought me closer to friends and family, even from afar. When there is nothing to do and everyone is freaking out you really figure out who you wanna turn to and who is there in the way you need them to be. Thanks for this opportunity to comment.
I felt both loss and gain. I feel curious at which things that were put aside will return and what new habits will last. It still seems to soon to tell, feels like we are between two times.
Part of my pandemic experience was caring for my terminally ill mother and losing her within the first 5 months of the pandemic (February 2020-June 2020). That increased my isolation and feeling that nothing will ever be the same. While it was awful and sad, I was lucky that my company went full remote and I was able to temporarily move in with my parents (PA) for those 5 months to be her primary care giver while working remote. Everyone else was struggling to adjust and it made me feel less guilty about preforming worse at work. Once she passed and I came back to DC, it seemed that everyone else was adjust better to the pandemic as well and work took over. Now myself, and my coworkers, regularly work 10–12 hour days with very few limits on work/life balance, since work is at home with you. I live in less than 600 sq feet. My office is my kitchen, living room and everything else. This last week I refused two calls from coworkers (that I knew weren’t urgent) that came in after 6pm. Nope, lets not do that to each other. I don’t want that overworking to be part of the new normal. Overall, I am lucky and happy I was able to be quarantined with my mom and care for her. I am also happy to start returning to normal and not be so isolated. The isolation has made the grief harder. I’m sure so many others feel the same, especially those who lost loved ones.
I think it is important to recognize the unequal impact of the pandemic both within the US and globally, especially when posing questions about whether the pandemic is functionally over.
It’s frustrating how lucky we are to live in a place with incredible medical innovations yet have a large body of the population who resists social responsibilities. The pandemic would not have been as bad as it was had people followed mask protocols and taken better care of each other. I am optimistic that new practices (replacing parking with outdoor dining, more biking, more teleworking, more funding for parks/recreation, etc.) will remain. I am hoping that we abandon outdated practices such as pointless face-to-face meetings and commuting to work in person everyday. Also hoping that this will be the end of harmful environmental impacts such as cruise ships and new highway/freeway construction!
Asking if the pandemic is ongoing is not the same as “the worst is yet to come” — would rephrase for clarity’s sake. No need to attribute/quote just wanted to flag that its a really leading question.
I was incredibly lucky in that no one I know personally died of covid, though I know people who got it. I also got it from both ends of the “covid cautious” spectrum while living with people: pre-vaccine I lived with someone who got really angry whenever I suggested the household had a smaller bubble; after moving to live with someone more cautious, I was told I was too reckless in wanting to see family post-vax. I now live alone for the first time in my adult life. Though I’m now brave enough to go outside post-vax & even go into stores, I’m still picking up all my food & eating it at home or outside. Going to a bar sounds absolutely nerve-wracking still.
Physically I was mostly unscathed from the pandemic (well, except for the 25 pounds I gained), but it was mentally exhausting. The everyday worry about getting sick or getting someone else sick. Missing contact with my friends and family. That was the hard part. I had the privilege to be able to work from home and not have to worry about losing my job. I feel for the people who didn’t share that privilege. I can’t imagine how anyone would come out of this changed a little bit. It does seem like things are beginning to look better though, and I’m excited to return to some of the aspects of my old life.
Still waiting for DOES from March 2020
I’m pretty weirded out by how quickly things have gone back to (mostly) normal. Is it resilience or carelessness? Who knows. I trust my fellow Washingtonians and people in the DMV to act right but I am more warry of people from out of town who come to visit Honestly the racial justice clashes and insurrection were scarier for me than the pandemic.
I think I’ve weathered the pandemic fairly well emotionally compared to most people I know, but I have struggled on occasion. It didn’t affect my work life much (my work was location-independent to begin with) but it really changed my social life. Looking back now, most of the past year (and the Trump presidency, for that matter) just seems like a bad dream. Now, it feels like at least the beginning of the end (though I fear that restrictions will return if cases rise in the fall and winter, even if they’re almost entirely occurring in clusters of unvaccinated people) and, based on data I’ve seen about the vaccine’s effectiveness, I feel comfortable doing just about everything I did before the pandemic, though I’d be even more comfortable if there were some widely-used, reliable form of vaccine passport and if rapid antigen testing were cheap ($5 or less per test) and widespread. I hope we as a society have learned from this experience, though I fear that we really haven’t learned much. There are just too many idiots (in the Classical Greek sense of the term) in this country.
TELEWORK FOREVER
I have seen almost none of my friends throughout the pandemic, and I have gradually started reviving my social life now that I am vaccinated and DC’s vaccination rates are showing a promising climb. As much as I love getting to go back to some of my favorite activities, whenever I see crowds of people going to brunch or going clubbing again, I feel terrible on a deep level because it feels like we are collectively trying to just pick up where we left off in February 2020. I don’t feel like we have adequately reflected on what we have gone through, what we are still going through, what we have lost, and how we let things get as bad as they did. At the beginning of the pandemic, it was clear that things like unequal healthcare access, housing instability, and mass incarceration were going to exacerbate the pandemic in a big way if we didn’t take any steps to mitigate them. At first, I had faith that we would undertake emergency measures to do that. We didn’t. We easily foresaw how structural inequality, primarily along racial and economic lines, were creating a tinderbox that the coronavirus would ignite, and we just sat here and waited to be immolated, because our national and regional leaders knew that they would not be the ones to suffer. Also, given how terribly the US was handling the pandemic relative to other similarly situated countries, I expected that we would come together and correct our response (including by increasing mask-wearing and by improving access to emergency healthcare). We didn’t. When I realized that the US was never going to strengthen its pandemic response, and we were just going to let it get as bad as possible until the vaccines came available, I felt hopeless in a way I don’t think I ever have before. I’ll never get over that, and I find myself unable to fully enjoy the return to normal social life because among other things I feel serious survivor’s guilt.
Thanks for creating this survey. They were really good reflection questions for me, and I appreciated having to think about them.
In terms of happiness, I responded “the same” but I think it’s more of a rebalance. I miss my family and friends, but my lifestyle is healthier by cooking at home and not going to happy hour 3–4x a week. I miss going out to concerts and sporting events, but I was able to start grad school part time without FOMO. I knew my previous job was toxic, but it took a year of working there in a pandemic to make me jump at an opportunity to leave. A casual dating relationship turned more serious on an expedited timeline due to pandemic restrictions, which could still end at some point, but at least it’s less time invested if it did? It’s a strange way to look at things, but here we are.
life will mostly go back to normal but that’s not a good thing. we have no social or collective way or will to mourn the dead and everything we’ve lost. when we do mourn it’s usually in a hyperpatriotic or otherwise distasteful way. these people weren’t martyrs for the cause, our government (and the world’s governments) caused thousands upon thousands of preventable deaths
Crises always show what people’s strongest attributes are- whether beneficial or harmful. I wish more people considered others before acting in a capacity that could actually harm themselves (or others). It’s unfortunate that many people want to “go back to normal” when the before times were quite frankly not good for many people- work/life balance (coming to work when sick), personal hygiene, toxic work culture, disrespected and underpaid service industry, using loopholes to abuse undocumented workers…Those things were part of the before times and they need to change.
I thought the question about going back to normal was interesting. I do think most people will go back to normal like nothing happened but I think there will be some lingering psychological factors that will affect us for years to come. In truth, I hope some things never go back to normal because normal wasn’t working.
Life will mostly go back to “normal”, but I don’t think we, as people, will ever be the same. Things that once mattered so much seem pointless, and things that we took for granted now mean everything.
Other fun 2020 things that happened were that I started infertility treatment and my husband and I started dating outside of our marriage (wheeee)
By having life slow down in so many ways over the last year, it became easier for me to see the paths I want to take going forward. It caused me to change jobs, my living situation, and end a relationship that was no longer benefitting me.
I don’t trust anyone that didn’t gain weight during the pandemic.
The last question is an interesting one. I think there will be a level of pandemic gaslighting-that companies, our government, our peers-are desperate for life to return to “normal.” But, we have endured a global tragedy together, and I firmly beleive we need time to grieve and acknowledge what has happened. I am starting to return to normal activities that I did before. I actually took the metro for the first time in 15 months just before taking this survey. Things feel “oddly normal.” Like, I cannot believe after all the changes and sacrifices people made that now I can just get on the train again (vaxxed and masked). I was so eager to get to this point, but it feels anticlimactic. It almost feels wrong, even though I have logic-ed through how safe these activities are for myself and my community. My therapist recommended I have some sort of ceremony for myself and my friends, where we name sacrifices we feel like we made (eg I reduced the amount of times I saw my family/friends, I celebrated important holidays over Zoom) and then thank ourselves for doing these things.
My responses here reflect my own comfort level as a fully vaccinated person in an area with low community spread. My son will be 2 in mid-July and is too young to mask, and several of the activities my husband and I feel comfortable doing on our own are not ones we feel comfortable doing with him — e.g., dining inside. To me, vaccination is the most significant factor; without it, our risk tolerance for indoor activities is different.
I went to my first party last night! After a year of not going into anyone’s house, not eating at restaurants including not doing outdoor dining, and not taking public transit, it was very strange. But also normal? It was both very intense emotionally and felt so fine. I both had way to many conversations at it about the pandemic (“its so nice to be able to hug you!” “this is so strange and I am so bad at small talk” etc) and did not think enough about it. I’m excited about this summer but wish I had a chance to process this past year more. At the same time I just do not think I am ready to do that yet. I lost so much (relationships, friends, my communities financial security, and also comparatively less than many of us and sitting with the weight of the last year still feels too hard. PS the party was “small” ~25 people all fully vaxxed which did feel safe.
I wish people were more open about the possibility of new variants. Hearing people say “I’ll never wear a mask again!” makes me feel so sad for those who are immunocompromised and/or caring for those who are immunocompromised. I think things are so much better than this time last year, but we need to remain flexible.
My life took a dramatic turn in a wonderful way during the pandemic. I got to live with family and work remotely. I spent time traveling, camping, roadtripping. And it was devastating to see so much struggle and anguish in the country. I also took up extra shifts volunteering, handing out food to those in need, and a weekly meal delivery service.
The pandemic stretched me beyond my wildest imagination. I found parts of my voice I never knew I had, I found more strength and compassion, I found love. I opened up myself to care for and be cared for by my community, and I found grace to make mistakes and keep on going. My world will functionally “return to normal” but I will never be the same.
We’ll need to live with covid among us. Similar to the flu, mosquitos, or STIs, we need to adjust to deal with it, but not stop living,
I started hrt during the pandemic and explored many other aspects of my gender I may not have made space for otherwise. I don’t know how much I want to try going back to from my life before because I’m not sure how much of it fits me anymore.
I don’t even know who I am anymore.
I think physical, economic, social, and mental health harms wrought by the pandemic are all very distinct and could/should be studied separately.
The biggest change I hope will be long-lasting is more flexible work arrangements, including hours and location, and more leverage for employees. Also, that we all consider quality of life more, not just compensation.
I don’t trust that all unmasked people are vaccinated. I’m having a hard time putting my double masks away. There’s no way I’d dine or go to theater indoors this summer, esp. as we have so many young people and Ward 7&8 residents still known to be unvaccinated. Until the “left-behinds” catch up, we are foolish to ignore their ongoing hospitalizations and infections (DC rates among the unvaxed are up with Michigan).
I would like to keep some more components of the pandemic that we’ve adopted, reduced capacity fitness classes, more access to hand sanitizer, masking when you’re not feeling well. Honestly, I was already getting tired of the bar scene and I really appreciated the break. On the flip side, with a bit more of a ramp up (the CDC no mask announcement was too quick for me) I’m ready for us to move on. The overwhelming vast majority of people in the US have access to the vaccines (and honestly, if you haven’t been vaccinated at this point for non-medical reasons, its probably your fault) and I’m ready to move forward-let us get a vaccine passport moving along, lets mask when we need to and take some lessons we learned from this pandemic forward. Also, I’m glad the U.S. is shipping excess vaccine supply abroad. The pandemic won’t be fully over until developing countries also reach high levels of vaccination.
I have more faith in my local government to handle the crisis than the federal government. On reopening, I would have preferred a more staged approach (25%, 50%, 75% then 100%) to gage the success rate at each stage. Instead, somethings, like baseball games, are jumping from 35% to 100%. If I were driving a car, I’d have whiplash!
N/A
What’s really gotten to me is the stratification — I work in a white-collar profession and mostly have similar friends, but my spouse works in theater and her entire industry imploded. We have have to curtail our expenses and lifestyle, and adjust some of our plans for the short- to medium-term future. People treating as an inconvenience what affected us significantly (and affected others much more profoundly) has been jarring and off-putting, and has harmed my faith in others’ capacity for empathy. Unfortunately, this has included leaders in my faith community, assuming the main outcome of the pandemic was capacity restrictions, rather than loss of life, employment, and hope.
I was insulated from most of the crisis since I was in law school when it started. Although I’ve been fine, I still worry about variants or, worse, what we do if even 30–40% of the US refuses vaccinations.
My “faith” answers hover around the threes because I’m averaging everything out — selfish assholes who scam PPP money or refuse to wear masks while unvaccinated are balanced out — or maybe even overbalanced — by the incredible hard work of mutual aid organizations and other kind community members. Same with the government question — Trump’s administration had a 1–2, while Biden’s is currently at a high 4.
The pandemic allowed me to say no to people. It reminded that I can draw boundaries on the things that I choose to do and also not feel like I’m failing or disappointing people for saying no. The thing that I fear most is losing this feeling of being empowered to do things within my comfort level now that the perception is that things are normal again. This makes me sad.
I really don’t know how to feel. I feel like some of us have been going through a major trauma and others seem to not think anything happened. I think America looks like things should be “back to normal” but I don’t know who’s opinions I trust anymore. No one knows the future but every newspaper and outlet has different opinions. I knew this country was selfish but I didn’t realize how much. I’m Catholic and I’m taught to sacrifice to help those in need, to love they neighbor. How can any, especially Christians, not do the bare minimum of wearing a mask to help each other? How can people be so uncaring, unkind? This pandemic has reveled a lot about people, companies, the country, the world. Barely any of it is positive.
I went through periods of being absolutely terrified and having panic attacks constantly. It is amazing how my brain has already tried to block out those memories.
I feel guilty saying it, but my life has been much better over the last year or so. I went from a toxic manager and workplace to working from home in a safer environment, I purchased a home for the first time, I was able to save money, my relationship with my partner has grown stronger and better, I am healthier and sleeping better. I feel bad saying it because I know so many people have suffered during this time. Some of my friends lost their jobs right away and have struggled financially. Others have suffered from living alone and started drinking a ton. Most of my friends have gained weight or feel unhappy or unhealthy. I am hoping that some of the things that have improved for me stay even when we reopen and return to normal — like options to work remotely at my company and more accessibility options for remote events — but I also hope that we can create a space for everyone to feel their safest, happiest, and healthies. I have also found it to be a disheartening period of time. It created rifts in my family among those of us who took the virus and lockdowns seriously and those who didn’t. I have lost a lot of faith in our nation, in our government, in our shared humanity. There was just such an ugly side to people that came out, rooted in such selfishness, ignorance and hatred. I don’t really know how we recover from that, especially when so many are trying to widen that divide even further. I can’t imagine the outcomes of World War II or 9/11 in this environment.
The level of social anxiety I now feel in large groups is so high and makes me feel so isolate from others. I don’t worry about getting sick while in a group, I just don’t know how to interact with others or form sentences that make sense. I hope this will pass soon, but it is impacting how I see myself and interact with others.
I think one thing missing from this survey is the global perspective. Everyone in the US over 12, who wants a vaccine has had a chance to get one. The last barrier in the US, in my opinion is figure out how to limit the exposure of the a**holes who refuse to get vaccinated from our most vulnerable (the immunocompromised and children who have not yet been able to receive it). However, other countries are not as privileged. The pandemic may be coming to end in the US, but life will not be back to normal until the global population is safe and vaccinated.
It’s strange that it took a pandemic for people to become more reflective about their own lives.
I dedicated myself to intentional personal growth in the pandemic (shoutout teletherapy) and found peace tending plants, cooking, and reading during Dark Winter. Now, with the temptations and pressures of social life returning, I’m worried about sabotaging my progress and unsure how to find the balance. My friends and I have been on a bender the last few weeks, and I’ve loved dancing and meeting strangers again. But I just have no sense of how much is too much — or even how much I want.
Setting boundaries has always been a sticky point for me, and the pandemic forced me to become protective and vocal about my limitations. I think my life will more or less return to “normal”, but I will never go back to being a doormat.
The “happier or less happy” question was difficult to answer. I was happier than usual for stretches, and much less happy than usual for stretches. A lot of folks I know well enough to discuss it had similar phases during this pandemic.
Frustrated by employers preventing flexibility after more than a year of upheaval
For those with kids too young to be vaccinated, the pandemic isn’t over.
A survey of this nature is interesting and a good idea, but the questions lack depth, which reflects a great sadness I carry regarding our relationship with the pandemic. Most people will not examine themselves, their lives, their routines, and will simply allow the natural order to “snap back” (itself a label worthy of reconsidering). Our common life together was broken, our culture poisoned by accumulation, comparison, competition, and performance. The pandemic arrested some of that, for a time. And yet here we are, beginning to snap back into old rhythms and routines, filling our plates, go, go, go. We could examine what was toxic in our pre-pandemic lives, commit to a new way of being, construct a new architecture for our lives built on love and compassion instead of greed and avarice; we could make collective meaning from our experience together and hold ourselves accountable to that commitment; we could rejoice in the opportunity to lament, grieve, heal, and redeem our individual and communal experience. We could make space for the loss — all of it — or the pain of being in a pod with some family but not others, or another’s family but not ours (my experience), or being stripped or control or agency by those in our pods, or carrying the weight of safeguarding the actual human life of those around us. But we are really just curious about when people are going out to eat without masks or not.
I hope employers, family, friends, loved ones, and everyone are more aware of and sensitive to the mental health issues that have manifested over the last year, and that will continue to manifest in ways we haven’t anticipated yet.
I got engaged, married, and separated during the pandemic. The next time there is a global crisis, my advice is to ride the relationship out before making any big changes.
Personally, my social anxiety and getting overwhelmed more easily now that I’m so used to being alone most of the time are bigger barriers to going back to big social events than pandemic-related anxiety.
I have an academic background in public health and have witnessed health experts warn the government and policy makers for years that a pandemic or worldwide health disruption was coming. These experts also recommended ways to prevent this, policies to enact, and different ways to finance movements. Much of the reason my faith in government to handle a crisis is so low is because the U.S. government, mainly President Trump, was STILL caught “off guard” by this, fumbled the response, and seems unwilling to dedicate much more funding towards public health efforts going forward. I have not yet seen a lesson learned, but perhaps there is still time.
For many, things already seem to be ‘going back to normal.’ But I believe that most folks have a much lower tolerance for BS, ignorance, racism, misogyny and other inappropriate behaviors than they did before, and will be much less afraid to speak out against daily instances of these by their employers, government officials, friends, family and neighbors. I hope that industries will shift as a result of folks taking more agency over their work, their marketing, and how their image and intentions impact the world. If we can make it during a pandemic, we sure as hell don’t need to work for an asshole who doesn’t know shit.
I hope the world continues having understanding for us introverts and socially awkward people. I now expect my friends to have more patience with me saying I don’t want to attend events, and I prefer seeing people in small groups or one-on-one. Since this society has an “extrovert bias” I hope appreciation for varying social needs continues. I also appreciate the increase in using technology for socialization to stay in touch with long distance friends. I moved to DC away from most of my friends shortly before the pandemic started; I don’t think we would have scheduled zoom game nights or hangout sessions had the pandemic not happened and thus would have lost touch with them more. Despite being on the other side of the country, I was effectively “the same” closeness as those in the same town since they couldn’t socialize in person.
This moment is a massive relief. Being fully vaccinated for now means freedom to bask in my community and re-enter my full life. For now. With the west hoarding vaccines, however, I am all too aware that this may be very temporary, as there are millions of people globally without access to vaccines, and not only is this an ongoing crisis for them, it leaves space for vaccine-resistant variants to pop up and send the globe back into lockdown.
