It’s been a surreal week, but under all the stress and fear something good is rising to the top
For those of us that have only known history to unfold in a mostly orderly manner, this week has scrambled the synapses and caused deep shock.
Did Belgium and France really go into lockdown? Did Australia really advise no one to travel overseas? Did Qantas and Jetstar really just stand down 20,000 workers and 80% of their fleet? Did churches stop performing mass? Is the AFL really playing short games in an empty MCG? Have two of the most pleasurable and enriching things – cultural life and travel – just suddenly been banned? No. Yes. It’s been a surreal week.
All week I’ve been feeling like a computer with too many tabs open in the browser. The information and news coming at us is almost too much to bear, our systems stalling then crashing as we try to take it all in.
Just one of these events would be of global significance for weeks – but on the morning news, the presenter reels them off, speaking slightly faster than usual, because there’s so much to get through.Did Belgium and France really go into lockdown? Did Australia really advise no one to travel overseas? Did Qantas and Jetstar really just stand down 20,000 workers and 80% of their fleet? Did churches stop performing mass? Is the AFL really playing short games in an empty MCG? Have two of the most pleasurable and enriching things – cultural life and travel – just suddenly been banned? No. Yes. It’s been a surreal week.
All week I’ve been feeling like a computer with too many tabs open in the browser. The information and news coming at us is almost too much to bear, our systems stalling then crashing as we try to take it all in.
Then there’s the change to our physical way of being in the world. This is the week our cities died. Offices around the country emptying out. Many people have started a form of isolation, an experience that will be entirely novel and unfamiliar to them. Shops, cafes, gyms, yoga studios and pubs have closed or are being forced to close. Some may never reopen. Only the casino seems to be immune to the carnage.
“You would not believe some of the things I’ve seen this week,” one cashier told me on the Wednesday of the world’s longest week.
"The messages pour in from all over the world. We’re all watching this together, as we isolate at home"
At night it’s hard to sleep. Across time zones, from the southern night to the northern day, I follow the progress of the virus as it makes its way around the world, mass graves in Iran, cruise ships turned back from all ports, Glastonbury festival cancelled, schools to be closed indefinitely across the UK, people on trains wearing gas masks, the vitality of New York drained in days as people shelter in their apartments.
But something else happened this week.
In the shock, confusion and sheer disbelief of world events, we all want to talk to each other. We babble incessantly to each other on the phone, Whatsapp, Facebook, Facetime, Instagram DMs and text messages.
“Are you OK?” we want to know. That is the main thing.
Twitter has transformed in a week from a grim cesspit of death threats and egos to a place of funny jokes and good science widely shared. Social isolation has never felt so social.
For all the years we have spent demonising the internet and social media, it will be our lifebuoy in these times of social isolation. There’s a new sweetness and kindness to life online. Under stress something good is rising to the top.
On Twitter I’ve seen doctors from all over the world provide real time advice to physicians in rural America trying to incubate Covid-19 patients. I’ve read more science than I did in six years of science classes, and I’ve seen concerts streamed on Instagram by Chris Martin and John Legend.
These performers are human and warm in a way they could never really be on stage, in an auditorium. Now as they sit at their pianos in their comfortable clothes, you can see the pores on their faces. People’s messages of fear, joy and gratitude scroll down the screen as they play.
The messages pour in from all over the world. We’re all watching this together, as we isolate at home.
This is a global story like no other. Every single person in the world is affected. If we didn’t know it then, we know it now - we are all in this together.
Our shared vulnerability is bringing out our tenderness - if we relax and let it. Three people I had rifts with got in touch this week. “Let’s not fight,” one said. Sometimes we didn’t even say that – we just asked if each other was OK and all the petty animus fell away. Festering hurt just vanished.
Why couldn’t it have been like this before? Why did it take this to put down our weapons?
A friend came by my house with groceries. We stood a metre apart and looked at the sky. The air was sweet and mild. There was a flock of birds overhead, making their screams. “The world’s still a beautiful place,” he said.
Yesterday, in town to buy a tennis racquet from a sports store that has margins so tight, they wouldn’t even survive a fortnight of closure, the owner didn’t seem afraid. She wanted to tell me about her bush walk this morning, before dawn. She was exultant, her face bright and full of joy. She saw the sunrise and said: “It was soft this morning, the sky was grey and pink – and then suddenly the gold came out around the clouds.”
There’s been so many other conversations like this with strangers this week – interactions that have had a peculiar and magical quality. The quality is gentleness, full of care and charged with an authenticity that’s done something good to my heart.
This will change us. There’ll be a before and after – and things will be different on the other side. We’ll be more broken. We’ll be poorer. We may lose kin. But I suspect we might be kinder and more tender too.
Just like a serious medical diagnosis can cause all that is false or unimportant in your life to fall away, this too is having a similar effect. What’s important to people? What’s important to you? We’re going to find out.
• Brigid Delaney is a Guardian Australia columnist
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