Covid-19 entered our life as an exotic piece of news and – fast forward more than half a year – eventually changed everything we knew about the world that had surrounded us before. We live in a new normal that consists of Zoom university and home office, a strange new world that changed our perception of physical distance and turned everything upside down. Various institutions and whole industries had to move online during spring and summer and it is now not surprising at all to see “online Nutcracker streaming tickets” on gift idea lists. But can families and meaningful human connections move online as well?
This problem is what lays at the core of various beliefs regarding long-distance relationships and doubts arising when family members move abroad. Normally, we fear having to love people from a distance, and even with the internet and the possibility to make video calls, maintaining true intimacy among us did not become less difficult. Throughout the year birthdays and other celebrations came and went in silence, connecting to each other became intertwined with the feelings of danger and irresponsibility. No matter whether they are the ones we love and long for the most or just everyday people at a groceries store, everyone regardless of our personal relationship to them got transformed into the homogenous group of potentially lethal “others”. And even though they did, we found that useful sometimes. The virus was a useful excuse for not catching up with the people we did not want to really catch up with, while in other cases, we just decided to ignore the entire situation. The virus tested us in terms of how much we are willing to go for another person. The very thing that separates us has become the go-to small talk topic and a seemingly easy and effortless conversation starter. “How do you cope?”, “How are you feeling?” we ask and we get asked daily. Our answer varies but the pinpoints do not: tired of Zoom, wish we would do this in person, cannot wait to meet you guys. But at the same time, isn’t it cosy to attend classes in your PJs and watch lectures on 1.5x speed while eating breakfast? Isn’t it cheaper and more convenient to stay at home instead of commuting daily? I used to hate how much time I had to lose daily on unavoidable things such as waiting for a bus or hunt for a meal in the city centre. Staying at home had some sort of magic and profound fun to it we all began to deeply get bored by during the last couple of months. Leaving the house, however, has turned into an exciting adventure. People started to dress up to go groceries shopping. As someone on Twitter noted, she started to understand why the 1918 flu pandemic was followed by the roaring 20s. By the amount of likes and retweets that tweet received, I would say others do now too. I do too. I miss watching movies without instinctively feeling uneasy whenever there are people indoors without their masks on. What I fear the most, however, is not the virus. It is rather the possibility of the long-lasting changes it could cause that do not go away with the vaccination. The normalisation of not meeting in person and the chance that I might never have to actually go to the campus to attend my lectures, only because traces of this virus and the potentiality of another will loom even in the brightest days from now on. The world we knew before does not exist anymore but we have to do everything we can to ensure that not all changes that happened this year will be permanent. We may not forget that even though it may be less comfortable in many ways, and even though we would not be able to eat breakfast with our cameras off during a tutorial or a lecture, meeting in person is at least human. And everything human in this increasingly alienated and digital world is a privilege.
1 Comment
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22/12/2020 11:58:45 am
I watch my lectures in 2.0x speed, but great article Zsofia!
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March 2021
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