I’ll start with a non-original idea (no comments please). Since March this year has gone slowly. The movement from the workplace to home, the lack of contact with other people, and the crushing consistency of living under threat day after week after month have overwhelmed all of us. We live in fear, yes, but we also live in boredom as so many of the things that gave our lives movement have dropped off and left us stranded in an ocean of paralysis. For many, even the things we should do feel pointless in the year’s dance with mortality.
All that, we know, but I was thinking today about that sweet day in the future when we are finally able to throw off the shackles and define life much more the way we choose and less as it is dictated for us. Is it going to seem like our lives suddenly hit the accelerator pedal and went from paralysis to the fast lane? Will the sudden contact with so many be overwhelming, will the demands seem unreasonable, will the choices be too many? Will we no longer be able to accommodate the pace of our former lives?
A lot has been written (and much more will be written) about the effects of the pandemic, or more accurately, the effects of quarantine on all of us. I suspect there will be a similar flood of studies on the “crawling from under the rock” syndrome of (goodness, I hope) 2021. If we have been substantially changed by this experience, then as changed beings we will react unpredictably to anything resembling our former world. It should be fascinating
Be safe, be strong.