The pandemic carries an undeniable message: Behold the great pause, we don’t know when it will come again
Last week, I watched Blinded by the light, a film inspired by the life of journalist Sarfraz Manzoor and his love of the works of Bruce Springsteen. The film is about Pakistani teenager Javed, who finds an escape from racial and economic turmoil while living in Luton, England, in 1987, through creative writing. In his poem, Luton is a four-letter word, he scowls with feelings of boredom and isolation about living in a place that has little to offer him.
While I cannot attest to Javed’s poetic description of his home town- having only ever visited its airport - I can empathise with his feelings of entrapment and wanting to roam free. Our situations are different. In his case it’s about wanting to escape a charmless suburban town and pursue his passion. In mine it's about being quarantined at home during a pandemic. But our causes are similar: they’re about making the most of what we have to see the isolation through.
On Javed’s journey towards freedom, he discovers Springsteen’s music through a school friend. At a time when his classmates’ cassettes were blasting out Aha and the Culture Club, he found the rock legend’s words and music resonated with him more. New Jersey-born Springsteen, who had a similarly suppressive working class upbringing wrote songs that symbolised escapism as a coping strategy. And when Javed listens to the hit song “Born to run” in the film, he runs outside his house, temporarily escaping a dull existence while singing the lyrics: “We gotta get out while we’re young, ‘cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run”. This keeps Javed inspired to concentrate on his writing while he waits for the day when he can leave Luton.
Since lockdown, I’ve heard family and friends using different coping strategies to help through self-isolation during Covid-19. They have found their Springsteen. This great pause from the hectic life that we knew is being joyously filled by baking, puzzle building, craft-making, talking to and caring for each other, mediation, exercising, cleaning and cooking. These are among the forms of expression on the journey towards freedom and becoming different people than we were a few weeks ago.
Conversations about the things we used to do are richer and the memories we share with family and friends now carry even more weight. With technology providing more ways for us to be in touch, this has somewhat dented the short term memory. But recollections of vacations and togetherness are fondly remembered in glorious detail.
Our lives and habits have changed. A friend shared that hers is now all about cooking, cleaning and taking care of children and animals while pursuing passions such as reading.
This may seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but by doing what we do, each one of use could potentially change the direction of humanity just by staying at home. And I’m not just talking about saving lives.
These changes are like a reprogramming of habits and the creation of beneficial and useful new ones, which can be made automatic now. See it as working on ourselves in mysterious yet wonderful ways. And during this great pause, this is the time to guard against growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us.
Ironically, while lockdown prompts us to reprogram our habits, it’s forcing us to slow down, and to embrace occasional laziness. It could be the universe’s way of telling us to be less productive and to witness life unfold in the hope that whenever we emerge from isolation that we become more comfortable with enjoying its simplicity. This may be the only time that being told to “get a life” actually means stay at home and doing little because in doing so, not only are you getting a life, you’re potentially also saving the world.
In his article ‘Prepare for the ultimate gaslighting’ Julio Vincent Gambuto warns about the moment when things go back to normal, when the hectic pace of life and mass consumerism will be so comforting that we forget all about the pandemic. He urges us to grab ahold of our senses before this happens.
He describes the upheaval caused by the pandemic as “inexplicably incredible. It's the greatest gift ever unwrapped, not the deaths, not the virus, but the great pause. What the crisis has given us is a once in a lifetime chance to see ourselves and humanity in the plainest of views and no other time ever in our lives.”
Each day contains poetry more than all the poetry books in the world. Quieter parks and streets, blazing red sunsets, chirping birds, and sleepier cities. All of this exposes a painful truth about how we lived: rushing, consuming, existing, while desperately trying to care for ourselves and others.
But this pause presents a chance to take a deep breath, to put down our phones, turn off the news and think about what we want to put back into our lives. To get rid of the societal conditioning and to only bring back what works for us.
With many lives taking on a different pace, new habits picked up since the quarantine are forming and each person is discovering their Springsteen. In finding what inspires us and by doing the things we wouldn’t normally do, there lies the hope that one day when all of this is over we’ll be ready for the new normal.
The crisis makes us realise that we care deeply about each other. And it’s that care that defines us as humans. From zoom calls to text messages and phone calls, this human nature should put us in the driving seat on the road towards a new version of normal.
What the new normal might look like is still unclear but its humanity, in its purest form that’s getting us through this, and as better versions of ourselves its humanity that should decide the way ahead.