Some years back, a friend and I were at a bar. I had asked her the kind of question you don’t normally ask at a bar - not before you’ve finished your first drink, anyway: “Where do you wanna be 5 years from now?”
To be fair, it hadn’t come out of nowhere; she was in the midst of potential career change and, well, it was making her ponder shit. She loved her current job, but she had received an offer from somewhere new, for almost double the salary. So of course, she expected little more than to hand in her resignation and throw deuces (I mean…). But to her surprise, and a little dismay, her current boss had made a comparable counteroffer. Either way, she would wind up making way more money than she was. But which job to take?
So I said, what it would come down to is: where did she want to be 5 years from now? And which job would help to best get her there?
It’s an age-old question, ya know…what’s it all about? Why are we here? But in the years leading up to our CoVid moment, there didn’t seem to be much of those sorts of discussions anymore. Instead, things seemed to be reaching a burnout point. There was just…too much of everything, and it was all a clog on the brain and the senses. Too much excess, too much anger, too much instability, too much FaceTune. And worse, it was an environment to which, and in which, we’d all become numbly complacent. There was no time to protest or make stands or ask the real questions, but there was all the time in the world for things like 2+ hour commutes, 60-hour work weeks, 2 or 3 jobs. Seeking promotion after promotion. Buying shit and more shit.
For what? And why?
And in a way, things did crash: this virus grinded things to a halt in a way that I am convinced needed to happen, and in a way that I don't know we would have been able to do on our own. But the conversations I kept hearing, reading, being dragged into, are those which say "I want things to get back to normal.” Let’s just get back to work. This isn’t fair. This isn’t right. Why are we risking the economy over this? How soon can we re-open? On and on. And while I understand – people need their job to make a living and survive, and we certainly can’t have our economy collapse (check out Pramila Jayapal’s proposal on ensuring that doesn’t happen, btw) – I see that whole viewpoint, and the debate it ensues, as a real loss.
For we’ve been given something that I don’t think any of us have ever had, and might never get again: months of time, and perhaps months more.
My hope at the beginning of it was that this would be a “pause” from the constant noise and grind of what our country has molded our lives to be, and become an opportunity for us to step back from it. For many of us, it could be a time to figure out what we value, and what we really want our lives to be. Not just as individuals, but as a society as well. Maybe we should question the necessity of commutes and office space. Maybe we should question our level of consumption. Maybe, once all the netflix and amazon has been watched, we should wonder we really enjoy doing with our time. Maybe we should wonder, what matters to me? Is it working to the point of stress and exhaustion, even for a fat paycheck, or is there something more?
Of course, most of the friends I told this to reacted with cynicism. "It’s all gonna go right back, right to how it was," they said, "Nothing’s gonna change. You have too much hope for people; they aren’t gonna be doing that sort of soul-searching.” And maybe they’re right. I’m sure plenty of people will be putting their focus on arguing over masks and if Fauci is lying and demanding to be allowed to go back to work so they can go right back into the routine they were in and WHO is corrupt trash and trolling in internet arguments and falling victim to the latest divisive thing.
But maybe…maybe not.
I’m not a huge believer in things like fate, but certain stars have seemed to align of late. Oftentimes, it takes terrible circumstances to push us to finally act against things that seemed for so long impossible to topple. Because right now, we’ve got this perfect storm: 40 million people out of work. We’re home, a captive audience to everything that unfolds before us every day. There’s nothing to keep us from it, other than actively tuning out; given that there’s a health crisis and people want to stay informed, I don’t know many who aren’t watching, reading, or listening. Only this time, instead of just being pissed off or shocked or disgusted, we have the addition of pent-up energy. Only this time, the routine that normally would wear us out or keep us preoccupied, is gone.
Watching the protests yesterday gave me hope. For so long, these sorts of protests haven't happened to such a degree because people just couldn't take off work, even for a day. But now they've got nothing to lose. And maybe it had to happen this way. Maybe these protests wouldn't have happened if we weren't all waiting for lockdown to be over. Maybe the outrage wouldn't have been as intense as it should be, had we all been in caught up our normal routines. But seeing what these protesters are fighting for - something bigger, something to hopefully change the way things have been for too long - should make us all reevaluate what's really important and what really matters. I truly hope these protests open a door that otherwise wouldn’t have been opened. And make us all understand that CoVid will be over eventually, and we have the ability to shift what's waiting for us when we get there.
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