After the great pause… looking ahead to life after lockdown
As we tentatively ease into a new way of living for the second time this year, we need to embrace the lessons we have learned from lockdown, says Grazia’s Anna Silverman
there’s a striking disparity on my Whatsapp group chats: half of us are relatively quiet during the day, beavering away, still in full-time employment – some juggling childcare. But the others have been furloughed or made redundant and spend the days discussing sourdough recipes, their bank balance and their mental health. Some only live around the corner, but they feel a million miles away.
Up and down the country, it’s been a tale of two lockdowns. For every family enjoying the extra time together, there’ll be another whose loneliness and longing has intensified. For every person who has saved money for the first time in their life, there’s another who has watched their business crumble to nothing.
Some of us have found our groove in the monotony of Groundhog Day and fear a return to normality will trigger the old FOMO again; others would rather gouge out their own eyes than spend another day reordering the spice rack.
But whatever your experience of lockdown, it will have changed you. And now, on the brink of a daunting, postcoronavirus future, we should embrace any coping mechanisms we have learned while inside. Thank goodness we’re getting good at developing them, because the world we’re coming back to won’t look much like the one we left behind.
New polling by Ipsos MORI shows many of us aren’t comfortable with the idea of going straight back to normality: just 20% feel relaxed about taking a holiday abroad and only 22% feel comfortable using public transport. Why would we be? From the pictures we’ve seen so far, our new, socially distanced world looks frighteningly unfamiliar: shields dividing diners in restaurants; offices with one-way systems.
Plus, for many, lockdown has been detrimental to their mental health, with 47% of people Grazia spoke to last month for our Life After Lockdown survey with Instagram saying it had negatively impacted theirs. Meanwhile, more than half (54%) of the 3,000-plus participants said lockdown had made them think about making a big change in their working life.
For some, lockdown has had a galvanising effect. ‘It’s really proven to me that I can live alone and happily, while also underlining that I don’t want to do that forever,’ says Rose Stokes, 32. ‘As we go back to a new version of normal, I will be putting an emphasis on holding space and distance at the beginning of a relationship, rather than rushing to find out how it ends.’
Others have even reported lockdown improving their mental health. Fiona*, 31, suffered with anxiety and depression before the pandemic. ‘It’s almost put things in perspective and made me realise there’s no point worrying all the time when so much is out of our control,’ she says.
Now the question hangs in the air: will we take the lessons we’ve learned in lockdown back out into the world with us? We’ve weighed up what matters; now we have to keep sight of these breakthroughs as our new future comes into sharper focus.