This post may be most relevant to England-based readers, given the PM’s announcements today about the Government’s route out of Lockdown. But surely it won’t be long in other parts of the world soon…
So are you beginning to get on the ‘We’re out of here soon’ bandwagon? With each headline about numbers vaccinated and debates about summer holidays and vaccine passports, are you perhaps feeling one step closer to freedom? With schools re-opening on 8th March, a travel review reporting in mid-April and pubs and restaurants opening outdoors later that month, theatres perhaps in the early summer, are you swooning at the prospect of a beach or an airport lounge, salivating at the idea of a pint of beer or glass of wine in a pub and beside yourself with excitement at the mere mention of a crowd, a gig, a show or just A NIGHT OUT??
Spring is almost here, the buds are visible on the branches and there is now most definitely light at the end of what has been a bloody long tunnel. Are you now visualising the day when you will emerge blinking into a dawn where leaving the house, leaving the country perhaps and hanging out for hours in the company of others, is on the menu again?
But steady on…. I mean, not only are we not quite there yet, more importantly, what have we gained in this period of time that we might actually want to hold onto?
Personally I confess to feeling a bit giddy at the prospect of reengaging in some of the things I love, most notably human company! And at the same time, I don’t think I yet understand the degree to which I have become accustomed to having so little of it and to what has taken its place. Well, there has been Netflix, as we know, but there has also been a large amount of time spent actively in my own company. When I say ‘actively’, I mean engaged in my own company, more attuned to myself, rather than distracted by TV or other people’s company. I am genuinely very grateful for this. It has shown me depths of resourcefulness that I didn’t know I had (even though I knew I had a fair amount). I have found ever more ways of being in my own skin, in my own company and in my own space that have genuinely nourished me. I know I have grown and deepened through these times and I don’t want to give all that up. I would miss it. I would miss me!!
We tell ourselves stories all the time about the world and the people in it, with all sorts of narratives about what they are and what they are not. We do the same things about ourselves: tell ourselves stories about who and what we are and who we are not, bestowing certain gifts, talents and characteristics on ourselves and denying ourselves others. “I am clever” — or not. “I am creative” — or not. “I am good with people” — or not. And so on. No doubt we have done that about the last year — put names to our experiences and labelled them in a certain way. Write a list now of all the words you would use to describe it: lonely? boring? frustrating? scary? painful?
But can you really say that that is the totality of how it has been for you: that and only that? Is there a different story you could tell of the same year in your capacity as historian of this little chapter of your own existence? Try it now maybe — see how many different little potted versions of the past year you can scribble down.
Our experience will have been multi-faceted. It will have been mixed with darkness and light, highs and lows, rises and falls, discoveries and banalities, losses and gains, endings and beginnings. And more besides.
As someone that lives on her own and whose life was largely focussed outside the home pre-Covid, with a lot of travel for work and pleasure, a lot of moving about, a lot of theatre and film and restaurants and adventures….the challenge was clear: would I be ok being so grounded and on my own? And believe me, there have been low points. The lows have been lows of acute isolation, loneliness and what I called “solitary confinement” together with prolonged periods of low mood arising from the feeling that everything in life that gave me happiness had been taken away from me. The lows have also been lows of anxiety about the wellbeing of those I love and the world more generally and degrees of uncertainty of a scale I had never experienced before.
However, there have also been gifts; gifts in the additional space and slower pace of life that have been incubators for my creativity; gifts in the closer care and connection in some friendships (conducted at a distance); gifts in the increased exercise I have taken indoors and outdoors that has kept me sane; gifts in learning how to be with myself without so much reliance on other people, other things or entertainment; and gifts in clarifying where I want to call home and claiming it.
So while I catch myself dreaming of boarding a plane to Spain or lounging on a beach like the one in the photo above which I visited in Thailand in January 2020, or when I look out excitedly across London from the top of Primrose Hill and imagine this magnificent city opening up again, I am also thoughtful about who I have become in the past year and which bits I wish to retain. There are riches here that I would miss were I to chuck them out at the first glimpse of freedom.
What about you?