Covid Empowerment
I’ve been noticing all over again that Covid is exhausting. Not just for me, but for everyone.
This Christmas break seemed to be one of the quietest ones I’ve ever experienced. I recognize I might be biased because it was the first time in my adult life that I took two weeks off to be at home. But I noticed that colleagues and friends were relishing and basking in their time off from “regular life” like never before. Covid has taken a mental, emotional, and physical toll, and people are justifiably tired. Good for you if you took time off this holiday season and truly rested in ways that are most meaningful to you.
What’s exhausting is the thought that we live in a world where we seem to have to fight just to survive. We hear messages that tell us to temporarily suppress our desires for connection, community, and interaction. For how long? We can’t say, but this struggle is urgent and important and the future of our world depends on your compliance. We hear it is good to limit our activities, and limit our going out, but also to limit how much time we spend in front of a screen, and limit how much we work because mental health is important. We’ve lost a common shared desire or definition of success. Covid has changed the rules of the game and we don’t really know what we’re working towards anymore, but whatever we’re doing doesn’t seem to be it.
In many ways I feel like these are issues that were present before Covid. They’ve just been magnified and shaken up. When all the shaking began, everyone panicked and reached for what they thought might be “the thing” that would help them feel success and safety in this time of chaos. Everyone’s senses were heightened, adrenaline racing, a rush of senses coming at us all like a rogue wave. Never forget #toiletpapergate 2020. But now, two years into the pandemic, the panic seems to have been replaced by the normalization of languishing. A sort of hopeless acceptance that this life isn’t really worth the effort, but it’s not bad enough to end things, so floundering is the next best option. Showing up, feeling blah, making it through the day, and resting overnight to lather, rinse, and repeat.
There is no new normal. There is no new shared belief that XYZ path equals “succeeding”. So why should any of us keep pushing ourselves and trying so hard to continue jumping through the same big hoops that governed a world that no longer exists? Where do we go from here? What is the point? Why can’t I just languish in peace? –an oxymoron that we don’t have to participate in if we don’t want to.
The presence of nothingness is the perfect opportunity to create. What success means moving forward, is up to each of us individually. Daunting, intimidating, and empowering. This is our new reality.
We have traditionally outsourced our priorities to systems and circumstances that are outside of our control. We’ve relied on school to tell us we are intelligent, we’ve relied on work to tell us we are productive, we’ve relied on hobbies to tell us where we belong, and we’ve relied on government to tell us we are safe. Intelligence, productivity, belonging, and safety are all things we deserve, but they don’t have to come from these structures and systems. We can create those things for ourselves and even more.
It may be intimidating to recognize and accept so much control when we have gotten used to outsourcing it all away. But maybe intelligence is taking a course online because we’re interested in that subject and because we say we deserve to learn more about it. Maybe productivity is choosing to get enough sleep rather than revenge scrolling into the early hours of the night. Or maybe it is taking up a hobby and turning it into a way to share your unique gifts with the world. Maybe belonging is about finding your people or person and realizing connections are about quality rather than quantity. And that small can be mean so much more than you ever thought possible. Maybe safety is about determining what you need to feel safe and learning to communicate your boundaries to others. Maybe joy is deciding you get to decide, moment by moment, what is worth your effort, and accepting that that’s all there is.
What society chooses to do from this inflection point onwards will either make or maintain history. I really hope it is the former. At least for me, I’m feeling this covid empowerment and am cheering for us all to make history happen today.
