We’ve got abandonment issues
WE knew we should disapprove when the CMO mentioned in one of his latest sermons about people holding house parties “with abandon”. He said the words with disdain. You suspect the CMO might disapprove of partying with abandon even if there wasn’t a pandemic. Which is something we will never know. Because when there is no longer a pandemic, we won’t have to listen to the sermons. Indeed, there is a sense his power is ebbing already.
While we know it is for our own good, and while we know it is categorically the wrong thing to do, and while we know the CMO is right, we couldn’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy of these people who are holding these parties with abandon. Indeed, we felt a bit of jealousy of anyone doing anything with abandon. Our lives have become so careful, so cautious, so regimented now, that the idea of abandon seems very far away. The only thing we do with abandon is wash our hands, and even that is suspect now, because we’ve been using water with too much abandon.
Abandon has become another one of those things, like congregating, descending on places and talking loudly, that are now verboten.
But then maybe abandon is back. The Taoiseach finally came out on Friday and signalled that he is reasserting control. There is a sense that if we are not quite throwing caution to the wind, we might at least be tempering our caution with a soupcon of abandon.
The big question now is whether we are too institutionalised to go out again. Polls show a high number of people afraid to get back to shopping and working and socialising. People aren’t used to the risk and uncertainty of leaving the house any more. There is almost a nostalgia already for the good old days of full lockdown, when life was simple, and the weather was good. Some people are already romanticising lockdown as a time when we reconnected with our families, took time out to reflect, learnt to bake banana bread and grow our own crops, a time when the children could cycle everywhere because there was no traffic (due to the non-functioning economy). We were tanned peasants living in a medieval, agrarian economy. Some people wondered if it shouldn’t be like this all the time, with big government paying everyone and telling us what to do.
Funnily enough, it is probably the much-maligned young people who will show us the way out now. Just as they have been partying with abandon, they will presumably be the ones to beat a path back to the high street, especially because you can’t get Penneys online. They will be the ones going for coffee, going to restaurants and bars when they can, and they will be the ones buying clothes, because, let’s face it, they’ll be the only ones who need a party outfit for the moment.
Maybe we will find, in the weeks ahead, that a little vaccination of appropriate abandon might be just what we need to get us out of our safe cocoons.