Negotiating A New Normal
On social distancing
It’s been a pretty weird week, hasn’t it? One in which many of us have moved from viewing coronavirus as some far off, distant threat, to experiencing its impact in every area of our lives.
Life for all of us has changed.
Suddenly we’re in unchartered territory, and it feels kind of unnerving …
A lot of people have been trying to give voice to the feelings and emotions this stirs up. So whilst I will leave all practical advice to the policy makers and experts, I do want to share a few of my personal reflections on what this past we has taught us.
What we learned this week…
We’re more inter-connected than we thought
Our modern world largely encourages us to think and act as individual consumers, but just occasionally larger forces like this come into play and remind us that we are all closely and inexplicably connected after all.
We are all part of a larger community, society and world. And all of our individual lives are fundamentally intertwined. What happens in China absolutely affects us here. Trump may want to put America first, and Britain may still want to Brexit, but crises like this are a great leveller. In situations like this, international politics and policies and borders designed to separate us out, suddenly don’t mean very much at all.
What we each do individually really does have an impact on the greater whole. And in the coming days and weeks many of us will have to choose to embrace some degree of personal loss for the greater good.
And indeed, many of us may already be experiencing that rub in different ways; encountering empty supermarket shelves, cancelling holidays, dropping social plans, taking a hit on our own businesses as we choose to socially distance ourselves to help protect the most vulnerable in society.
So let’s have grace for ourselves and for others as we try to make those difficult decisions.
2. We’re a bit less infallible than we like to think
Most of the time, most of us living in the western world tend to live within a bubble where the lives we lead feel pretty safe and secure. We feel protected by our wealth and possessions, by technology and science, and by democracy and our social structures.
It’s not often that these sources of security fail us, and leave us feeling very vulnerable and exposed. But that’s essentially what’s happening right now...
Since this coronavirus pandemic has begun to pick up pace, anxiety levels have steadily risen, and understandably so. You can feel the fear of the uncertain and unknown just hanging in the air. It’s there every time you switch on your tv set, log into Facebook, or even pass by strangers at a distance on the street and exchange a knowing look.
You may or may not be one those people articulating it all out loud, but there is undoubtedly a sense of shifting sands beneath our feet for us all. The fact is that the coming weeks and months won’t look like quite like life as we’ve always known it before. And we don’t know when normality will return.
As a result, many of us will be living in a state of constant, low level anxiety right now because this is a situation we are unable to control, and all of our normal safety nets can’t shield us from the impact or guarantee our security at all.
So again, let’s have grace for ourselves and each other as we try to process and make sense of it all.
3. Our normal coping mechanisms are a bit less effective
We all have mechanisms we use to cope and/or to numb out when a form of crisis hits our lives; be it financial, emotional, relational, ill health or something else.
These coping mechanisms can take different forms and expressions for different people at different times; but some of the common themes would include socialising with friends, planning in treats and events to look forwards to like holidays, and closely relying on our closest connections such as extended family to support us.
But what happens when the rug is well and truly pulled from under our feet, and those well-established support mechanisms are temporarily put on hold? And what happens when caring for the people you love becomes keeping your distance?
For many of us, the biggest threat of all posed by COVID 19 may yet actually turn out to be the impact on our mental health, and for all of us our emotional resilience will be tested and stretched at times.
It will be a challenge not to replace those healthy support mechanisms which are suddenly unavailable, with more unhealthy ones instead; things like drinking, comfort eating, or getting demotivated and just numbing out in front of Netflix.
So let’s have grace for ourselves as we try to find our footing on new ground, let’s check in more on our emotions, and let’s look out for one another too.
4. We’re having to strip back, slow down and simplify our lives
As social distancing becomes our new norm, with many of us being asked to work at home and to stop attending social gatherings, we are having to learn a whole new way to live.
Some of this means stripping back to the bare essentials; resisting the need to hoard and store up provisions for weeks and weeks, and realising that we don’t need as much as we once thought.
Some of this also means slowing down and cutting out a lot of our normal activities; realising that we can live with far less social interaction, less travel, less busyness, less rushing around.
And I am certainly not saying that this will be easy. I am dreading the idea of home schooling my five year old at the same time as trying to work as much as the next mum is! (Did I mention that he’s also on the ASD pathway and really struggles with concentration?)
I’m also really sad to let go of many of the plans I had already made for the coming weeks. Some of them are just small, like going to a gym class or to the pub with friends. But things like cancelling concert tickets, a meal for mothers day on Sunday, my 40th birthday party plans, or spending Easter with my extended family, some of whom I haven’t seen since Christmas time, break a tiny piece of my heart…
There will be hard days ahead for all of us, as we each start to explore what it means to embrace the present and live day by day, one day at a time.
But at the same time, I honestly think there will be some useful learning in this for us too. It can feel really hard letting go of what is very familiar, but perhaps what we gain will become as important, moving forwards, as what we lose.
Perhaps in due course, some of us will find that our lives could be much simpler than they often end up being.
So let’s have grace for ourselves and others as we grapple with trying to live in a different way, let’s search for the silver linings, and let’s commit to taking good care of ourselves and each other.
(And also, let’s keep on washing those hands!)