Normalisation in action
About seven weeks after the first stream of corona consciousness I am used to this. In fact I have partly forgotten what was before and happily queue 1.5 m away from everyone to get into the supermarket and most likely in another week I’m also used to wearing a mask, which became a mandatory accessory in the 2020 shopping experience. I go for walks and bike rides, take online yoga classes and have my Saturday night fever on Skype, Hangouts or Zoom. Every now and then I wake up to a panic of possibly not being able to go home for the whole year, or not making it to the hospital on time when my inevitable heart attack comes, but in general I am fine. In a limbo, but fine. In a state of waiting or deferred activity, but fine.
Humans adapt so well, we just make do with what is there and try to make the best out of it. We hear that now is the time to take a pause and reflect, wash the windows and spend time with the family, and at the same time is ok to not be active or efficient because this is, after all, a special time and you are allowed to wallow in your misery. But don’t wallow too much because behind the corner, there are those young, energetic overachievers who have already come up with the latest way to ‘contribute’ and ‘add value’.
Of course I am one of the lucky ones as I can work from home and my personal economy is not ruined in one month, or even three. There are those who are struggling keeping up with everything from work to kids to relationships and those who are exposed every day in their jobs, or witnessing, from a distance, how others stop breathing. And there are Others who are coming up with ways of making profit out of this because only a sucker doesn’t. And there are those who don’t believe any of this is real.
Regardless of how many kinds of us there are, this is all we talk about before we get to talking about something else — this is our shared situation, finally the world is one albeit more fragmented than in ages. Together we we look at the charts predicting if we reached the top of the curve, strategise to get out of this, join our hands in prayer for a vaccine or in denial of the existence of the virus.
