The View

Humans were blessed with a poor memory for pain. It sits in the back of our minds, subtly motivating a slippery definition. Over time, if the source is not constant, the sharpness recedes. It loses form until all that remains is a diluted memory. The blurred pain of our past lurks in the background until a fresh injury reminds us to pay attention.

This pandemic is the current open wound — a raw reminder of who we have become.

So here we are, all paying attention. But to what? Or own mortality? The perceived stripping of rights? Inequality that was always painfully obvious from the view at the bottom?

I would argue we are mainly paying attention to ourselves. Our whole world narrowed overnight. All that’s left is the center of it — ourselves, our fear, our loneliness, our pain. And a varying array of slick screens to distract us from the oozing. What was once the building blocks of modern life, the trivial daily pursuit, is now stripped bare. We have been left with the time to reflect.

Before this happened, I read an article about privilege and technology. Mainly, that the extremely privileged people of the world were moving away from life in front of a screen. Being attached to your phone or a computer had become passé. A word I first learned at the counter of a Neiman Marcus when I was twelve.

I had wandered in there thinking it was the right place to find a tie clip for my grandfather. Feeling so childish in such an adult store, I sheepishly approached a woman behind a glistening case of men’s cufflinks and money clips. They were foreign objects to me, but I had been told by some other adult in my life that old men liked ties and their clips, so there I was, trying to find something impressive for an old man who seemed as foreign to me as his accessories. He never received that tie clip in the end, and I can’t for the life of me remember what I gave him instead. I promptly left the store, tail between my legs, after being told my ridiculous idea of a gift was passé and Neiman Marcus no longer carried them.

Neiman Marcus filed for bankruptcy on May 7, 2020 when the Coronavirus told them they were out.

The same thing happened to British cuisine when spices became too accessible. The upper class recoiled in the opposite direction, touting the virtues of tasting food in its natural state, and now the entire world thinks British cuisine sucks. A sad turn of events for our taste buds, but a great example of how meaningless luxury can be.

Leisure travel, fine dining, and experience based consumerism is out. Hell, hugs are out. A virus decided they had run their course and were no longer fashionable. Setting their designation as passé, they joined the ranks of my grandfather’s tie clips.

What will become of us now? At home with no pressure to impress, we have turned inward, even shunning our screens for the weight of something physical. After the initial novelty of zoom calls and video chats wore off, they became weighty obligations too. We started looking for a break from the glass in front of our faces. We are reading again. We are going for walks and waving to neighbors we’d previously never met. Some of us are sorting through 1,000 piece puzzle sets, slowly forming groups of cats lounging in fields of wildflowers or softly painted English cottages. I personally sorted through my long neglected, and growing collection, of mismatched socks to marry the pairs.

But life must have more than that. It must have a sense of hope, a sense of purpose. There must be a real or imagined greatness in the meaning of our lives. Technology has given us a way to broadcast that to our growing circle. It wasn’t just about connecting, but about crafting a life worth projecting, and now what do we have to say: I’m bored? I’m tired? I’m broke? I want to get my hair done?

These are not the aspirations of our usual social selves. This is who we really are. We are unstable, unsure, and ultimately self-centered, despite being in this together. We have not stopped broadcasting ourselves, we have only stopped curating the content. Something has broken, and unlike our puzzles, it cannot be put back together again.

This is good. It’s eye opening. We have a choice now. This is our chance to use the pain of a fresh wound. The age of social media ushered in a false sense of reality, one that needed disrupting. A virus corrected our behavior in an instant. Screens went from enemy to lifeline. Social media from a place to broadcast yourself onto others, to a place to actually connect with them. It forced us to venture into our gardens, roof decks, kitchens, bookshelves, and any long neglected nook and cranny. If this virus hasn’t taught you to see yourself, your neighbor, your friends, and your community through a new lens, you are doomed.

Modern life will continue to respond to the same problems — the problems it creates for itself. It’s extreme, it’s shallow, it’s fast-paced, and the only choice we have is how we navigate it. Will we be like a young girl in a Neiman Marcus, sheepishly seeking items to impress uninterested persons? Or will we break away from this tradition and decide it’s time to impress ourselves?

There is no certainty. There is no normal. It is time for us to be okay with that, and to help the least equipped of us to find footing on the paths we help build. It is time for us to stop imagining and reminiscing on some fantasy of a Golden Age, and welcome all the ugliness of the real world. We cannot change what we cannot accept. We cannot hide behind screens forever, even ones meant for social distancing.