He who is not relieved is because he does not want to and there are always those who experience great inner revelations as a result of events. The confinement has meant for many that source of epiphanies, giving rise to a kind of low-level social theology, materialized in little phrases that we drop here and there, with the expectation of achieving collective assent and feeling more sheltered in misfortune or, perhaps, in discomfort.
By dint of being repeated, that is to say, by dint of assent, these little phrases mutate little by little into assumed truths. However, they also awaken the perplexity of those people who, for better or for worse, do not feel identified with them.
Let us examine them more closely.
1 How happy we were and didn’t know it
False: we weren’t that happy, we just lived more comfortably and more freely in some ways – and just as uncomfortably and as enslaved as we do now in others. Or to put it another way: you were happy and didn’t know it? speak for yourself: I did know how happy I was, so I wasn’t surprised when I stopped being happy.
The subject has been widely covered in the press, and there is no doubt that the Covid-19 pandemic will be remembered, among other things, as the new golden age of the journalistic sub-genre of opinion. There you have “We were happy and we didn’t know it”, Iñigo Domínguez‘s column published in El País on March 19: a chronicle between humor and melancholy about the loss of happiness (or the discovery of the loss of happiness) during the first days after the declaration of the State of Alarm. If you want to take a leap in time and observe the opposite view, take a look at “Vaya turra con la felicidad: cuánto durará eso de que no lo sabíamos“, by Juan Tallón, published on 28 June on Uppers.es.
Speak for yourself: I did know how happy I was, I haven’t discovered it with the confinementThe theme is not only relevant because, as Tallon points out, happiness always shines with a neon glow in the content industry. It is also because reducing the health emergency to the fact that we didn’t know how happy we were before it began is like the new version of “We don’t know what we have until it’ s gone“: probably one of the most absurd phrases ascended to the truths of the oracle throughout the unstoppable process of social idiotization that we call History. Obviously, we don’t know what we have until we’ ve lost it, because it is impossible to appreciate something that you have in the same way as something that you don’t have. You just can’t. The end.
On the other hand, How happy we were and didn’t know it is also the pandemic equivalent of We are nobody and God always grabs the best from the old-fashioned wakes. Those kinds of phrases that are used to flagellate oneself for not having taken advantage of time, for not having been grateful, for not having been wise enough to foresee that we would lose happiness through, in this case, a pandemic.
Examining the past with today’s eyes is not only necessary, but inevitable. However, judging the past with a present eye is one of the stupidest mistakes that can be made when thinking, whether the judgment leaves you above your past or below it. Better go back to the present and, if you can, find out about your “happiness” now. After all, the old one is not coming back.
2 The reluctance to break the lockdown is due to the fear of the virus
It might be in your case. In the case of many other people, the reluctance to become free from confinement is due to their desire to preserve the advantages gained during confinement rather than to return to the disadvantages they were living with before confinement began.
On June 2, writer Isaac Rosa published an eloquent column in Eldiario.es entitled “ You don’t have a ‘cabin syndrome’, you just don’t want to go back to your shitty life“. Disappointed? It usually happens when things are explained to you without lying.
In the aforementioned column, Rosa spoke precisely of the fact that we should not pull cheap excuses or euphemisms to express in words our truth: we do not want to leave the house because of the desire to maintain the advantages – few or many – that the health emergency has given us in terms of our daily routines, mediated mainly by our way of working before and during confinement.
You may be afraid of getting sick if you go back to your old work dynamics, but don’t think that’s the most frequent reason for other people. It is actually as if we are realizing that what we are afraid of is not meeting the virus of today, but meeting the virus of the past.
3. With the confinement I have realized the frenetic rhythm that I had
We welcome lucidity and the awakening of consciousness. We welcome leaving behind denial, naivety and numbness. We welcome landing, opening our eyes, and seeing reality without sugar-coating it to make it look foolish.
But speak for yourself, while you get up and dust yourself off after falling off your horse, many people could say: I was already fully aware of how badly I was living before March 2020, of the frantic pace I was keeping, of the lack of quality of life that my over-demanding organization of time and work gave me. Confinement has only made that impossible lifestyle more evident, if possible, and for which the health emergency has been a truce, an experiment and, more than a demonstration, a confirmation by contrast.
4 We appreciate openness, flexibility, improvisation
In situations like the present one, many people are trying to see the good side of the new organization of leisure and the more or less complex plans (read, the holidays) that the sanitary emergency forces us to. It happens because, at the end of the day, there is no choice but to adapt to the circumstances so that the show continues with the best attitude from everyone.
Thus, now that we do not know if our flight will be cancelled, nor if we will be refunded the amount of cancellations to which we are entitled to, if on arrival at a hotel we will be ordered to return to where we came from because there is a positive or, worse still, if we will be confined there for several weeks because there is a positive; Now that we do not know if the country we want to travel to will have its borders open with ours, or we know that where we want to go we cannot go; now that we have to get up the courage to organize a trip and make a few reservations… Now, in short, many see the positive point of this new dictatorship in the here and now in terms of programming.
“How nice now to be open to the unexpected, right? What a great learning experience: to be more flexible when it comes to making our wishes come true. Embracing change, savoring the romanticism of deciding everything at the last minute and embracing the adventure. To take advantage of this wonderful opportunity to learn that the end of the world offers us and thus function in a more spontaneous, as well as more organic, way
I miss the security and predictability. That made the trips enjoyable, not the improvisationIf that helps you and you’re enjoying it, you’re very lucky! But speaks for yourself as you embrace the chaos. Because I don’t see any advantage to uncertainty, or improvisation, or risk, or frustration, or anything like that. I miss the security, the comfort, the ability to program, the solidity of the preparations, the predictability in the fulfillment of my wishes throughout the calendar.
Obviously, before the pandemic there were cancellations, changes of schedule, last-minute plans, major causes that ruined a vacation. But they were exceptions. We lived in a structure of predictability that made traveling (or preparing a trip, rather) enjoyable, not the other way around. Now I adapt to what there is, what remedy, but I do not see the opportunity for anything good in this new and forced way of working.
Having said that, whether you identify with these phrases or play in the opposite team, the truth is that we are all in the same game (and it doesn’t seem that just by going to the next stadium you will be able to play something different). There are as many ways to evaluate the health emergency and its tails as there are people who are suffering from it and all of them are valid if they are valid for the person who expresses them. The problem comes when we abandon ourselves to the common place and confuse the point to which our experience is shared. We can be in serious error.
