The end is nigh (in a good way)… But which re-entry tribe are you?
THE PROBLEM WITH this bit is: having had a sniff of some forthcoming Normal, a timeline out of restrictions, having spotted an unprecedented but – can it really be? Yes! Yes, it is! – distinctly hopeful glint in scientific advisors’ eyes… It now doesn’t feel like Normal is coming forth quickly enough. Knowing all this will, after all, end, isn’t just an exercise in joyful anticipation, it’s also a jolting reminder that what we’re experiencing right now is unacceptable. A despicable excuse for an existence. An injury. An insult.
Restrictions might endure but, emotionally, we’re now half-in, half-out of the Covid mindset, caught in a flickering, Matrix-y schism of perception; hopeful and terrified, grateful and furious, only now capable of starting the grieving process – at the precise point we’re about to regain some of the things we’re mourning. Oh, I want this over, I want this done! I want to fast forward to a time when we’re reminding each other what an absolute shitting nightmare this was, then thanking our lucky stars it isn’t happening any more. I want my life back. Now.
I’d assume everyone else would, too; but if Covid has taught me one thing (it hasn’t: it’s taught me about a million things. I can’t wait for a time when I don’t have to keep learning stuff, about epidemiology, or my inner self, or my fellow man – it’s so exhausting!), it’s that not everyone responds to an existential threat to humanity in the same way. Accordingly: there are two schools of thought when it comes to the Ultimate End To All This, two tribes of feeling, of approach. My lot – all giddy chomp-at-the-bit impatience underscored by a renewed sense of fury re how disgusting it’s been – let’s call us the June 21-ers… No, sorry, that doesn’t work: let’s call us The Keenos! Versus the other lot – cautious, anxious, fearful; not on a health level, but in a more general, meta way. Let’s call them the Tentatives. The Tentatives don’t like Covid and its attendant awfulness any more than us Keenos (but, who does like Covid? That might be the one way in which the world is united. Literally no one has ever said, ‘Covid? Ah, I don’t really mind it…’); but the prospect of transitioning back to a full-speedahead, as-you-were life after it – with rush hours and unfeasibly overfilled calendars and work-life-everything-else imbalances… It’s a lot for the Tentatives. Enough to inspire the social equivalent of the bends, to leave them feeling a smidge agoraphobic.
On the plus side, unlike the fiercely divided responses to pretty much any single thing that’s happened to us since Brexit, the Keenos and the Tentatives need not engage in an ideological fight to the death/lobby for the summary cancellation of the other. By our very nature, we co-exist elegantly: Tentatives are happy to relinquish their space in the queue to get into stuff once it re-opens, Keenos are happy to let the Tents chill in their PJS for as long as they need. Hey! Is that progress?