Today, the powerful make themselves busy with the task of quantifying things that can be quantified. They look for the comforting numbers like vaccines sent, and they look for the disturbing numbers, like counting the dead, and they feed it to us. We, on the other hand, are the everyday folk, the meat of the population. We rely on these numbers on a day-to-day basis; our entire day, probably even our many months' emotional disposition decided depending on the magnitude of the number, and of course, the context, we mustn't forget the context.
Some of us even have a special list in the back of our mind of quirky coronavirus knowledge that we’ve collected during our isolation. Some of it will stay, the echoes of the themes tattooed, destined to age into a wispy sepia in our minds forever. Whether it could be that nasty newly spawned distrust with local government and how they handled this monumental panic or how for a brief moment we all came together and the voices of the positive and hopeful out-sung the usual shrieking nihilistic degenerateness of the internet — then dissipated. Either way, it’s shaped all of us, together.
What we don’t see yet are the consequences of the isolation of billions. The quiet yet resounding effects of forced introspection — keyword: forced. There are entire industries created for the sole purpose of shutting up the inner thoughts. Our lives dependant on the reliable dulling of those thoughts. O sweet, sweet alcoholism, how lonely I love the nights to be, without my thoughts and their bitter company.
How many of us have succumbed to despair? Statistically quite a bit, but who’s counting, and how are they counting? There will be those who have faced anguish after anguish as their situation goes from decent to good to bad to very bad. There will be no public service announcements or candle-lit vigils for those people; we’re not quite there yet in mental health.
But for those of us who have held on, who have fought off despair with whatever we have in-hand, good job, because as of right now, early 2021, it seems we’re at the home stretch. While we won’t be able to remember all the days, similar to how we’ll never remember all our meals or all the books we’ve read, it will still completely shape us.
When everyone else is running with fervour towards the return of routine, slow your pace and be cognizant of what you gained from your isolation. Figure out carefully the value of whatever it is you found or didn’t find, and weight it carefully, give that small spark the decency it deserves. It’s the least you could do.
