In the end, we shall be released

And so it begins. We’ve been impelled into a true test of our national and individual character; to sustain ourselves in isolation for our collective good. It had to happen. Had the Government not shut down our non-essential services the virus would soon have shut down our essential ones.

For the coming month at least we find ourselves, of sore necessity, a nation on home detention. Usually that’s a court-imposed sentence. Even so, it’s generally to be preferred to a death sentence, which is what inaction was estimated to impose on tens of thousands of us.

As much as our supply and infrastructural needs allow, we are for now a nation of homebodies venturing out only for necessities or taking just the occasional walk with our household members – even then keeping real distance from any others doing the same.

Enforced domesticity has become a survival tactic, and in that sense we should not simply try to put up with it but respect it, not only for the lives at stake but also as our very best shot to lessen the brutality of the economic and social impacts this pandemic will cause.

Of course it’s all desperately unfair. Feel free when the need arises to take yourself outside, raise your voice and your fists, and rail against fate. You’re entitled. Just stay well distanced from anyone else doing the same.

In some respects there’s perhaps a sense of relief. This is a plan. And an emphatic one, imposed at an earlier stage of infection than so many other countries could, or did, muster.

The past 48 hours have been disorienting, deeply worrying and at times chastening. Panic shoppers with their devil-take-the-hindmost approach are showing a failure of intellect and of social responsibility.

But there’s nothing irresponsible, in fact it’s mightily to be encouraged, for us to seize every opportunity to enjoy, not simply endure, as much of the coming month as we can.

Entertainment is not a guilty pleasure. Cheerfulness isn’t inappropriate. And sardonic humour, well that’s our speciality.

We should recognise each little home-comfort pleasure as a victory to help sustain us.

If we’re discovering new ways to entertain ourselves and one another, or rediscovering old ones, then so much the better.

There will be hard times too. In many respects we’re in the ‘‘lonely crowd’’ that Bob Dylan describes in his hymn to the prisoner I Shall Be Released, except in that song the isolated inmates are crying out their laments to an indifferent, unheeding world.

Not us. We can listen for, look out for, and help one another. As we must.

We tend to be pretty good, as a society, at that sort of decency.

But it’s no less a moral imperative to stick to the new public health requirements, recognising the importance of our own actions in this new and desperately unforgiving environment.

Whether or not we do these things, we shall be released. Eventually.

What’s at question is how long it will take, and the state of the society that awaits us.

There’s nothing irresponsible, in fact it’s mightily to be encouraged, for us to seize every opportunity to enjoy, not simply endure, as much of the coming month as we can.