You Don't Have to Go Back

The other day Callum and I drove down another empty street, and he sighed. “You know – I’m kind of not looking forward to things going back to the way they were.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The busyness, the noise. Always having somewhere to be.”

“I know what you mean. Privileged as it is to say it, I’ve really liked lockdown life.”

I get that that is a privileged thing to say. This pandemic is not a good thing. People all over the world are suffering in unfathomable ways from loss of life, loss of income, loss of social connection. In no way do I want to undermine the very real aspects of grief and fear that have defined these months for so many people.

Nor do I wish to undermine those for whom this season has brought more busyness and less space than ever: for essential workers and medical staff, for parents attempting to work from home while homeschooling their kids, for priests visiting their elderly parishioners. I am so grateful for the sacrifices you have made, and am praying for opportunities for rest and deep peace in your lives.

But for many of us, lockdown life has been a time of emptiness (or less fullness than usual), for better or worse.

My own experience of the last eight weeks has been one of light and shade, peaks and troughs. I’ve filled whole journals with the details of anxiety and uncertainty, with prayers for all who have been stretched thin. I’ve wept many tears of loneliness, shame, and frustration with the loss of control. I’ve experienced a tiny taste of the world’s pain through my own homesickness, unemployment, disconnection from friends, struggles to stay motivated at study, and lack of purpose.

I have also experienced so much grace, and such deep gratitude.

Little by little, God has eased my grip on busyness and control and invulnerability, and said, “Be still. Breathe. Take one day at a time.”

He has drawn my attention to the innumerable rich details of a day that I often neglect to notice: the dance of the morning sun on the leaves, and the precise time of evening that first star comes out.

He’s reminded me of what is actually necessary and what of my material and mental life before lockdown was actually superfluous.

And now, as restrictions begin to ease, and we begin to contemplate life post-COVID, He’s challenging me not to go back to how things were.

Coronavirus can be a blip on the radar of our lives, or it can be a catalyst for conversion.

We can look at life post-lockdown as a chance to rush back and replicate our pre-COVID existence – or we can take the time to evaluate who we are actually called to be in the wake of this.

Below are twelve things I believe we shouldn’t return to post-COVID. You might disagree, or you might have another dozen to add. You might want to take some time to think or pray about the items on this list, or discuss with a friend or partner your own approach to life after lockdown.

For me the value of this season of emptiness and, in many ways, brokenness, has been the chance to evaluate what I usually rely on – my addictions and masks that keep me from living with authenticity and energy – and to challenge their legitimacy.

~~~

I don’t want to go back to, and you don’t have to go back to:

1. ‘Crazy-busy’

Busyness can be an addiction and a defense mechanism that we use to avoid our deep discomforts and insecurities.

While many of the things that filled my pre-COVID days (choir, soup kitchen, uni clubs, time with friends) are worthwhile things that I can’t wait to get back to, the ‘aura of busyness’ is something I want to renounce.

I don’t want to rush around to distract from the fact that I’m not sure where my life is really going. I don’t want to push away quality time with the people I love because I need to maintain an image of productivity. I don’t want to neglect rest and recreation because I believe I need to justify every moment of my time in order to feel worthy.

I want to order my priorities wisely: working well, serving well, loving well, resting well – and doing fewer things, well.

Part of our ‘crazy-busy’ culture also comes from FOMO and an inability to say no to things. We feel insecure and guilty if we aren’t present at every event or experience. But perhaps what this season has taught us is that we thrive on meaningful work and connection rather than frenzied attempts to keep up.

2. Invulnerability

I’m blessed to have at least four people I’ve long felt I can bare my whole heart to (my parents, my boyfriend, and my best friend who’s in Malawi). And I thought they knew it all – but turns out that lockdown life grinds you into the dust in ways you didn’t think possible. Weak, humbled, I’ve had to choose whether to reach out and connect, or whether to hide in my stress and shame. It’s been a battle to be honest with even my nearest and dearest, because every defense mechanism in me shouts ‘Look strong. Look like you have it all together.’

I don’t’. I don’t think any of us do. We’ve been humbled and compromised and challenged to grow by these circumstances, and chances are we have felt incredibly vulnerable. We have been sad and scared and unable to rely on our usual facades.

How great is that? Bravado is a barrier to authentic intimacy. Vulnerability – letting down our defences and allowing someone to see our naked, bleeding heart – cultivates a culture where the weak are shown dignity rather than ridicule. In seeing how vulnerable we really are, we can emerge from this crisis more honest, more empathetic, and more merciful.

3. Disconnected family life

One of my usual walking routes takes me through a network of parks and bikeways. And every day it’s almost comedically crowded. Families are out in droves – kicking a ball around, biking together, walking, wandering around with toddlers and point out birds. Our neighbourhood streets are coated in chalk drawings. My next door neighbours have started having regular dance parties with their primary-school-aged son.

While homeschooling and working from home present many challenges – and I recognise there are families out there struggling desperately with conflict and domestic violence – I have also loved seeing the ways lockdown has drawn families and households closer together. There aren’t commutes or extracurriculars to interrupt time together. A lunch hour can be spent laughing and sharing rather than scrolling through social media in the work break room. Honest conversations and good old-fashioned fun have time to happen.

Even with my parents in a different country, I’ve relished the chance to talk on the phone more often. I know that they’re not busy. They know that I’m not busy. Rather than squeezing conversations into bus rides or rare free moments, we can chat for several hours without the sense of guilt that maybe we’re holding the other back from ‘their real life’. Family is our real life, our most important life, and heading into the next season I want to make room to cherish that.

4. Materialism

I’ve been keeping track of my monthly budget throughout 2020, and was shocked to realise that my April spending (including rent, bills, etc.) came only to just over half what I spent in February. And back in February I thought I’d been thrifty.

With shops and cafes closed, with no reason to take public transport, without social occasions to buy new clothes or makeup or gifts for, without mini-getaways, life is cheaper. And while I know that the economy will need a boost in the wake of this crisis, I think it’s also important to recognise the difference between want and need in our spending habits.

Life has been beautiful and rich in the last eight weeks without relying on material acquisition to boost my mood. Having food on the table and a roof over my head (and a good book to read) has felt so sufficient – perhaps even more so than the rush of things and experiences former life afforded. I feel like I’ve rediscovered ‘the grace of enough’ in a multitude of ways.

5. Commuter traffic, globe hopping, and gas guzzling

Quiet streets, quiet skies, and quiet agendas aren’t just aesthetically satisfying – I believe they make an incredible difference in the disruption and destruction of the environment. By living smaller-scale, we show concern and respect for wildlife species, for natural resources, for human lives affected by pollution and climate change.

I think this lockdown has given many people the toolkit to interrogate their travel habits: Do I actually need to commute or can I work from home? Is this overseas trip necessary, or can I discover more about local destinations? Can I have fun with my friends and family simply by exploring the twisting streets of our own neighbourhood?

I want to be intentional going forward in recognising that bigger isn’t better. My bucket list can focus on local experiences and bring no less delight than eco-destruction options.

6. The gym

Okay, go back if you want to. But my vote is for ‘green’ exercise. I love being outdoors. I’ve loved walking 15km a day for my “Corona Camino” and investigating the different natural environments and walking networks around Brisbane.

Staying fit and healthy hasn’t seemed hard without the gym – it’s actually seemed more refreshing and invigorating. No bright lights and loud music. No scarily-toned instructors sending my body image spiralling. No constant withdrawal from my bank account reminding me that I’m not making the most of my membership.

I’ve loved moving my body in a way that makes sense to me, and feeling the ache of my legs after a long day of walking. I’ve loved that I can listen to podcasts or audiobooks, or just my own thoughts in silence while hiking. And I love that my 18-month initial contract with my gym has now been fulfilled and I can pull out as soon as it reopens.

7. Taking health for granted

For one of my Master’s degree research projects, I’ve been investigating microhistorical fiction written about three previous human health crises: the 1347 Black Death, the 1665 Plague, and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. What’s emerging has been so fascinating to me. None of this is new. Disease and public health management are some of the most stable features of human society down the millennia.

One of the more ironic quotes I’ve stumbled across is from an early-twentieth century American physician speaking about the influenza pandemic: “Never again allow me to say that medical science is on the verge of conquering disease… Doctors know no more about this flu than 14th century Florentine doctors had known about the Black Death.” We’d do well in 2020 to heed the words of 1918.

Obviously I know that scientific research and medicine have come a long way in the last seven centuries. But the unfathomable, the uncontrollable, and the unplanned still come to us – whether through disease, natural disaster, or the small twists of fate that disrupt our best-laid plans. Health is a privilege, an incredible victory against the odds. Coronavirus reminds us that we, like all who preceded us, are vulnerable to infection and ill health and widespread loss of life. Human thriving and meaning co-exist with that fact, rather than somehow being interrupted or undermined by it.

Let’s give thanks daily for the health that we do have – and also for the chance to become aware of its fragility. Memento mori, friends.

8. A squeezed-in prayer life

The greatest luxury of this season for me has been the mindset of ‘retreat’. Rather than seeing prayer as a box to be ticked at the start of a day, I’ve allowed lockdown life to revolve around contemplation.

For years I’ve had on my bucket list “Do a 30-Day silent retreat,” and while I’m not sure the last eight weeks have quite qualified as ticking that off, I definitely feel like they’ve acted as a retreat season. I’ve discovered that more than anything, my prayer life is sometimes lacking personal permission for deep investment. I long for contemplation, but at the same time it brings me guilt: the story of Mary and Martha is enacted daily in the depths of my soul.

But the truth is that one day I would love to be a Benedictine oblate and maybe even a spiritual director. Prayer is my yearning, my resting place, and perhaps my mission itself. COVID restrictions have given me a chance to explore that contemplative charism more and build into its legitimacy.  

9. Taking the sacraments for granted

Last Friday, the feast of St Joseph the Worker (May 1), Callum and I got to go to Mass and receive the Eucharist for the first time since the Feast of St Joseph (March 19). Getting home, I shared that fact excitedly with my housemates who exclaimed, “You got to go to Mass! And Confession!” After a pause, one of them laughed. “When did that become such a novelty?”

For years I’ve loved frequenting the sacraments, but in daily life before COVID, it had become something of a box to tick. Adoration, communion, and confession were readily accessible, and perhaps, at some psychological level, not that special accordingly. Daily Mass – oh yeah, whatever. I do that.

But lockdown life has reoriented me to the privilege it is to encounter Christ in the sacraments. It shouldn’t just be a bland routine, but the pinnacle of our experiences. It should be something we fight for, rejoice in, and can’t wait to share with friends.

10. Taking service for granted

This cuts both ways for me. How grateful I’ve been for the essential workers, medical and food-related, who have risked their health to continue serving the public. How wonderful it has felt to look checkout attendants in the eye and say, “I really appreciate what you’re doing.” How wonderful it’s felt to get coffee from a local shop and see the grateful, desperate smile of an owner who knows you’re helping keep her business afloat. I don’t want to take service workers for granted ever again.

I also don’t want to take for granted my own opportunities to be of service to the community and the vulnerable. I’ve missed Saturday mornings volunteering at soup kitchen so much. It’s usually a chance to get out of myself and my needs, and just be present in tangible, messy reality. Every conversation I have with a streetie, and every dish I wash, enriches my life so much. Serving the vulnerable and lonely is a joy, and I know in the past I’ve taken that joy for granted. Hopefully emerging from this season I can re-commit to reliability, presence of mind, and radical generosity as volunteering becomes possible again.

11. Having a lot to say

How many of us have caught up with someone on the phone or in person, and faced the humiliating/frustrating experience of:

“What’s been happening for you?”

“Not much, you know. Lockdown. You?”

“Yeah same. Pretty dull. Ummm…..”

Conversation dries up, we find each other boring, and we realise that we ourselves aren’t actually the best company. 

But in that moment we actually get to seek out the people behind the chatter: our true selves and others true selves. We can listen deeply to their deep thoughts beyond superficial busyness. We can find ourselves united in the simple struggles of lockdown life. We can offer the deep relational reassurance that comes from choosing to stay committed to someone even when they cannot entertain us.  

As life gets busier again, it will be easier to mask silence with anecdotes and complaints. But perhaps conversational deficit and deep listening are actually skills to cultivate and employ in the future to reassure our friends and family that even when they lack words, we still care.

12. Control

I suppose this is just a summary of the previous points – but for me it’s far and away the most tempting addiction to return to. I miss my timetables and to-do lists. I miss planning the future. I miss organising my life into little boxes that I feel I can depend upon.

But the gut-wrenching, free-falling feeling of the last eight weeks has actually brought a lot of fruit. When I’m not in control, I need to surrender to circumstance. I need to learn the virtue of obedience. I need to learn humility.

Again and again, this season has taught me that I cannot control anything. I can’t control the foot tendon strain that has recurred to dampen my Corona Camino ambitions. I can’t control the speed at which a trans-Tasman travel bubble will be opened to let me go see my parents. I can’t control even my own ebb and flow of anxiety about the world’s suffering.

All I can do is love and trust.

That statement will remain true even when illusions of control return. At the end of the day, I am not actually ever in control. All I can do is love God and others, trust that what has been given to me is sufficient to achieve what is asked of me, and trust that all shall be well.

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That’s what I don’t want to go back to – but life isn’t all about renunciation. While not wanting to rush back to addictions or masks, I also cannot wait to spend quality time with the people who matter, to serve the community in tangible ways, and to invest in the things that bring authentic delight.

Hopefully what will come out of this season is a choice to live with humble authenticity, to prioritise meaningful connection over artificial busyness, and to be grateful in all things.

AMDG