Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes but when you look back everything is different…
C.S. Lewis
UK lockdown – end of week 5. I have come to peace with the fact that while the quarantine will continue and the pandemic be a reality, I will be unable to write about anything but life during the lockdown. I’ve tried. But whenever I read scientific articles, I unconsciously end up sorting them between “relevant right now” and “not applicable”. For example, I came across a new piece of research investigating what aspect of the personality makes you go to an opera while enjoying pop music, also known as being a “cultural omnivorous”. And I thought it was interesting, but I couldn’t help thinking: “is this still going to be true after?”. The ‘after’ world is a wonderland when we will be able to go out and enjoy social times with friends, have access to cultural places like museum and theatre, and be allowed to gather in parks. It is also a world where everyone will have to adapt yet to another reality and live with their new selves. Because there is no way on Earth that lockdown is not changing us, at least a little bit.
The first thing we will need to adapt to is another concept of time. If I’m being honest, I’m not sure if I have fully adjusted to the new experience of time we are currently living. I am never sure whether the week is passing very fast or if an hour feels like a day. Before the lockdown, in 2020 (whatever we had before the whole world went upside down), January felt very long and time suddenly started passing by very quickly until mid-March. That’s when the reality of things started hitting Europe and measures were taken. Each country reacted in their own ways but because the modern wold is so connected, we all knew what was happening around us and even more so when living in a different country than your family and friends. Then we started comparing our quarantine, trying to guess which government was doing the ‘right’ thing and in which country were people more compliant than others.
Each human being is moved by 3 types of time: constructed time, which is quantified and rhythmic, defined by our activities (social, familial, professional); biologic time, which is the one that tells you how many hour of sleep you need to be a functioning(-ish) human being; and intimate time, which is your own perception of how time passes. The concept of time has always been elusive, but at least we used to follow the clock of our constructed time to have a certain routine, dictated by our daily lives or jobs that helped us organise the different chunks of time into an organised succession of moments. We knew when we were supposed to be at work, when we had to be at home, when we were exercising, what time to go to bed, etc. But now, it is always time to be home. Constructed, biologic and intimate times do not have their own time in the day anymore; when it’s daytime, we were used to follow the clock of our constructed time, but we can’t anymore. Are we then supposed to let our circadian clock dictate our rhythm? And how are we supposed to deal with our intimate time and a completely skewed perception of passing time? Days that feel like weeks and yet we don’t feel like we are able to do anything productive. We used to be running out of time all the time, and now we end up with too much time on our hands. What to do with all this time?
Keeping a structure to the day can help deal with our times. Having a basic understanding of what makes time pass quickly or slowly can help design a nice schedule for our weeks in a way that we are keeping control over our intimate time. Familiar activities, part of a daily routine, tend to make time goes quickly; boring tasks or unusual/new activities tend to slow time down. When thinking about how to structure your day/week, think about what you would like to do, what type of activity it is (usual, boring, unusual) and try to alternate between a task that will make time flies and a task that will stretch it out. Why not add a bit of time to reflect on what makes us happy, trying out a new hobby, or changing some of our habits and behaviours?
The second thing we will need to readjust to in the ‘after’ world is access to plenitude and abundance. The lockdown is a time of withdrawal, voluntary or forced. It can be voluntary in that we may use this time to willingly give up some of our habits (e.g., smoking); it mainly is a time of forced withdrawal. Our social needs are no longer met, we realise how easy it used to be to have access to… pretty much everything, thanks to shops being open or online speedy deliveries. This withdrawal is painful (all withdrawals are) and might leave us in pain. We are not made to being socially isolate, we are not made to stay inside, we are not used to such a restricted lifestyle, we are not used to juggling all our lives at once (personal, professional, domestic).
Whether we want it or not, the situation is what it is. And we have to comply if we want a chance at this ‘after’ world. Our bodies and brains are (slowly) getting used to this new ‘normal’, helping us accept the new rules we have to comply with. We used to complain about queuing at a supermarket or to get a drink in a bar; now, we found ourselves lucky to have open supermarket near our homes for us and we are ready to queue to enter the shop. We are using every modern tool at our disposal to maintain a form of social contact to keep loneliness at bay. Our brains are ‘resetting’ all our baselines: we are now used to living with few. We remember how it used to be, but we haven’t experienced it for so long, we are now daydreaming about a time we had to fight for a spot on a sandy beach. We have learnt to tame some of our impulses, by choice or by force. We are being more mindful in what we buy and how much we buy, either because we do not have the money for it anymore or because it is no longer available. We come to realise that there are things we want we previously thought we needed (I still want things I don’t need, I am just more aware of the difference now).
Once the ‘after’ world arrive, we will have to juggle between the remaining anxiety linked to being around people that we have avoided for such an extended period of time and the want to go out and explode. We might redefine the number of miles we are willing to travel to go see a friend or go out to a restaurant. We might redefine the number of pair of shoes we “need” per year. Not only because it could be good for us (and the planet…) to redefine our happiness by combining pleasure and restraint, but also because it might be too much for our brain to get everything “as before” all at once. Plenitude-OD might be a new condition in this ‘after’ world.
The lockdown is getting tiresome and now more than ever do we need to come up with new ways to keep busy and provide structure to our days. Only then will we be able to go through the coming weeks with limited effects on our mental health. Now is a time for reflection and introspection: what makes me happy? What do I need, truly need? What do I want for myself?
What I've started I must finish. I've gone too far to turn back. Regardless of what may happen, I have to go forward.
Michael Ende – The Neverending Story.
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