Unless we are divinely called to monastic life, most of us don’t thrive in isolation. Even we introverts have our limits. Besides, it’s one thing to choose seclusion and determine for ourselves when we want to hole up alone and for how long. It’s quite another to have confinement thrust upon us and to have it go on… and on… and on…
It was a Saturday in March when my husband and I sat in a local brew pub and vaguely wondered if it was safe to dine inside. We’d just hiked a trail where the scent of hand sanitizer was palpable. The next day, Colorado’s Governor decreed that anyone who’d recently been in Summit County should quarantine at home for two weeks. A few days before, we’d been to Breckenridge with family visitors.
Two weeks? No problem. It’ll be like a campout.
We washed our hands and loaded up on groceries. We washed our hands and pulled out the jigsaw puzzles. We washed our hands and tried new recipes, then washed our hands some more and binge-watched The Tiger King. There was an ease and a coziness to those early days, believing our confinement would be brief and that it was a noble endeavor in the interest of public health.
Weeks turned into months. We cancelled trips. Folks we cared about got sick. People were dying. The first set of holidays came and went without our loved ones. Then came the vaccines and that brief respite when it seemed things were going back to “normal.” We escaped for two brief visits with family (the airports were a nightmare), and a quick road trip to see college friends. Even booster shots wouldn’t stop the ominous Omicron and we again cancelled our travel plans. Are we doomed? Will society as we once knew it ever be the same?
“Being socially connected is our brain’s lifelong passion,” says UCLA neuroscientist and professor Matthew Lieberman, whose book, Social: Why Our Brains are Wired to Connect, explores the evolution of human socialization. “It’s been baked into our operating system for tens of millions of years.”
Lieberman, who, for the record, wrote this book well before the Covid pandemic, maintains our need to connect is as powerful as our need for food, shelter, and water. It is simply how we humans are wired.
In an interview in Scientific American, he said:
“Languages around the world use pain language to express social pain (‘she broke my heart,’ ‘he hurt my feelings’), but this could have all just have been a metaphor. As it turns out it is more than a metaphor – social pain is real pain.”
So is the adage Misery loves company. Company is exactly what we’ve been missing during quarantine, along with companionship, comfort, community and, in some instances compassion. We want it all. We crave it. We need it. Yeah, sure, Zoom is great, and has even been a godsend, but it’s no replacement for handholding or snuggling or getting a bear hug from your kid.
When forced into quarantine, whether for a few weeks, months, or even years, we can resist it or yield to it. We can resent it or embrace it. Those options are not mutually exclusive.
I call it the pandemic paradox, a situation that is both/and. We may have a day where we accept and embrace and yield to whatever life has put before us. Maybe that goes on for weeks, and then BOOM! It all goes to hell – Serenity now! – and we become resistant and resentful. We get sad, angry, depressed, and sometimes even despondent.
For me, the pandemic paradox looks something like this:
I am hopeful. I am disappointed.
I love everyone. I hate everyone.
It’s great trying all these new recipes! I am so sick of cooking.
I have so much to say. I have nothing to say.
Then I slip from paradox into paralysis. Motivation wanes, as does concentration. I am unproductive. Instead of a work in progress, I am a work in regress.
I throw a little paranoia into the mix. Every time I sneeze or sniffle, have a scratchy throat, or get a headache, I think This is it. I have Covid. I test negative but am distrustful of the results. I reassure myself: I’m not running a fever and haven’t lost my sense of taste.
Winter historically brings me to a place of malaise, but it usually doesn’t set in until February. The melancholia started early this time. I’ve been moping around since the week between Christmas and New Year’s. When I remember, I tick off my list of things to be grateful for, and then start sulking again. I feel trapped. Sorry for myself. Some days I stay in my PJs and wonder what happened to the notion that the first month of the year is supposed to be filled with hope, resolve, and new beginnings? Out with old, in with the new?
We are collectively fatigued and burnt out, staring down the barrel of the pandemic’s two-year mark in the United States. We’re sick of rolling up our sleeves (and putting on our facemasks) while shouting, “We can do it!” like Rosie the Riveter.
You know that quirky coincidental thing where you hear a word or a name and suddenly it’s EVERYWHERE? In a book or crossword puzzle, on Jeopardy, in a bit of dialogue in a movie? Right now, the word is “January,” mostly uttered with disdain, as though it’s saturated with an unpleasant odor.
On her Unlocking Us podcast Brené Brown bemoaned the month: “God dang it, January’s hard!” The day before, even my therapist was like “Ugh, January,” and pointed me to a Facebook post from No Cure for Being Human author Kate Bowler in which she talked about “January putting itself in the garbage disposal unit and running it a few times…” Then a publisher friend shared some encouragement:
It’s not you.
It’s everyone.
We are spent.
You’re not imagining it.
No, we are not imagining it. It’s as real as it can get. And while I would never wish misery on my fellow humans, I do take heart that we are indeed not alone in the greater scheme of things. We are connected even when we feel disconnected simply by having this shared experience.
Most of us haven’t taken vows of silence and are not called to lives of isolation, prayer, and meditation like mystics in all the major spiritual traditions. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t last a week, not like Julian of Norwich. She was a 14th-century English monastic who was a child during the time of the plague. Later she had visions and lived out her life in seclusion as a theologian and a writer. Her words are believed to be the oldest surviving English language work by a woman. One of her legacies is a statement I’ve turned to over the years, one that I find reassuring during this global pandemic. Whatever your spiritual practice, perhaps it will speak to you, too.
“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Photo: ©Julie Anderson, excerpted from Jasper John’s painting “Slice”
