6 No, Gwyneth, we don’t all need to learn a new language right now
ENTIRELY PREDICTABLY, when it comes to leadership on surviving a terrifying pandemic, one of the first to step on to an (anti-bacterial) soapbox was actor and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow.
Last week, our favourite guru posted an Instagram shot of herself carrying shopping bags back from her LA farmers’ market, looking gorgeous in a black tank and culottes, accessorised by blue disposable gloves. It was captioned with an edict from St Gwynnie to follow official orders and stay home. ‘It’s time for nesting, reading, cleaning out closets, doing something you’ve always wanted to do (write a book, learn an instrument or a language or learn to code online, draw or paint) going through photos, cooking, and reconnecting on a deeper level with the people you love,’ she wrote.
In other words, Gwyneth will be spending lockdown lighting her vagina-scented candles, dusting down her French horn and perfecting her rusty Mongolian on the Duolingo app. There’ll be laughterpacked, craft-your-own-vulva sessions using exotic twigs from the herb garden with Apple. With Moses, she’ll enjoy gluten-free baking time. Then both kids will skip happily back to their enormous bedrooms for online tutoring in astrophysics from an unemployed former Harvard professor.
The Goopster is far from the only one treating lockdown as a hybrid of an extended spa break and Open University degree. My Instagram’s packed with influencers wittering on about their excitement at finally having time to alphabetise their spice racks, read Proust and watch back-to-back streams of Shakespeare plays from the Globe Theatre’s archives.
Yet, for most of us, lockdown reality isn’t quite so dreamy. If you’ve just lost your job, or – as one of Britain’s 4.8 million self-employed – seen your income vanish overnight, the prospect of teaching yourself how to crochet or performing 18,000 daily push-ups might not seem appealing.
If you’re working from home, at half your normal pace because your concentration’s shot and you’re also trying to home-school three hyperactive under-10s and worrying if your mum 300 miles away has enough bread and heart pills to keep her going, then the idea of painting a mural in the living room might be a tad low on your priorities list.
At the end of another day of isolation, most of us scarcely have the energy to brush our teeth (and toothpaste’s running low), let alone embark on making a sourdough starter. We just want to pour ourselves a huge glass of whatever alcohol’s available and collapse in front of Belgravia – to marvel at the golden age when people danced gavottes together, completely heedless of the two-metre distancing rule.
Life was pressured enough before this catastrophe kicked in. So please, let’s not add to our current stresses by competing as to who can have the #bestlife isolation.
That’s why my corona heroine (alongside the NHS workers, teachers, police officers and supermarket workers) is the novelist Joyce Carol Oates, who admitted she is not re-reading Ulysses/war And Peace right now because she’s ‘hyper-busy’ learning how to navigate Zoom, etc.
‘Even in good times, social media’s all about showing off how successful you are,’ says Trine Syvertsen, author of Digital Detox: The Politics Of Disconnecting. ‘Right now, that seems to have just intensified and you can feel judged for not using this time for self-improvement.
‘Surveys are showing that while a minority are seeing isolation as a wonderful opportunity, many more people are totally overwhelmed and their concentration and focus is really vanishing,’ she continues. ‘Very few of us are able to focus beyond the short-term right now. It’s very hard even to take a one-day-at-a-time approach – we’re talking more like one hour at a time. So don’t feel guilty if all you’re achieving is just coping. Be gentle on yourself and stay safe.’
Wise words indeed.