Love will tear us apart

AS the Taoiseach spoke, Ireland seemed to plunge into black and white. The place literally looked greyer. The colour was gone, the joy seemed gone. All the things that keep us going, that distract us, that allow us to muddle through our lives without having to think too much, were being stripped away. Our scaffolding of sport, entertainment, nights out, socialising melted away.

And because we didn’t know for how long, it seemed there was nothing to look forward to. And we realised that our lives up to now had been punctuated by things, big things and little things, to look forward to. We couldn’t even think about the travel, or the escapism of dreaming about travel, that keeps us going through long afternoons in work. And we realised that a world without things to look forward to could seem like a very bleak, monotonous place.

And that was just the first-world problems end of things. All the commercial enterprises that bring joy saw trade going off a cliff. People who had worked in thriving businesses were losing their jobs overnight. People who had jobs had no one to mind their kids all of a sudden. A generation of grandparents, many of whom had got a second wind in life out of their grandchildren, were suddenly starved for touch, because their grandchildren were potentially chemical weapons to them. If the virus didn’t get them, the loneliness might.

We had been trying to bargain and rationalise.

The flu kills half-a-million a year, and we never hear much about that. But after Leo spoke, we knew there was no more delusion. Now there was the world before his speech, and there was the world after it. And even though we knew on some level that this was coming, nothing prepared us for the eerie quiet that descended, for the stilling of those bustling public places where we put our best foot forward and display our public selves.

We still secretly hope that we will look back on this madness and laugh, that the sun will come early and melt away the virus, or maybe that because we are doing all the right things, we will be spared the worst of it. And we need this graduated delusion. They know it, too. They are drip-feeding us the lockdown. Adjust to this much first, they seem to say, and then we might need to squeeze a little tighter.

Some experts say we need this anxiety, that the fear of God needs to be put into us so we will comply. Some are still not complying as much as we would like them to. And as much as community and kindness are kicking in, so is resentment and fear.

And, of course, the one thing we need right now is each other, but more and more we have to be suspicious of everyone if we love them or care about them, and to protect ourselves.

We will adjust to this. We will manage to come together as we are being torn apart. We can do this because we have to do this. And we will learn from it. Like, who knew how much kids actually like school?