Reviving Our Social Lives After the Challenges of COVID-19

Now that COVID and the Midwestern winter both seem to finally be at a breaking point, with vaccines being distributed and the summer sun on the horizon, it’s about time for us to get excited about being able to rejoin our friends for beach days, quality time with family, and a much-needed sense of social normalcy.  No matter how cliché, the phrase “you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone” continues to ring uproariously true as we attempt to crawl out of our caves of social isolation and distancing to regain the depth of social networks that helped us so much to thrive before we were forced to get creative balancing pandemic responsibilities with our innate need to be meaningfully engaged with the people who define us.  I know that at least for me, the damage that this pandemic has done to the way I experience social relationships (and to my sense of self) is going to be difficult to rehabilitate, but I also strongly believe there’s a lot to learn from what we’ve experienced and that we can take those good things with us moving forward to create a more positive world.

Feeling like a part of your community is important to anyone’s sense of identity, and many of us currently lack most of the little social experiences that really cemented this feeling of belonging in our minds, like saying “hi” to random strangers at the store with your smile actually visible from a distance that doesn’t feel like we have to act repulsed and afraid of being within six feet of another human; or sitting down at a café to do some homework while enjoying the white noise of caffeine junkies gossiping away, instead of ordering a latte off an app and then sprinting inside the dreary coffee shop with the chairs stacked on the table while you try to speak loud enough to overcome the surprisingly annoying muffling effect of your uncomfortable mask that blocks yet another thankful smile from being seen.  These little things that we did with and around other people gave us a sense of belonging, not to mention the even more significant relationships we’ve had to try to navigate while the endless possibilities for bonding and fun devolved into video chats with a poor internet connection.  Honestly, people came up with many creative solutions for trying to meet their social needs and I applaud those ingenious solutions, although none of them really filled the empty spot in my soul.

While I don’t profess to have experienced the effects of COVID worse than anyone else, I do profess to loathe the enormously rude interruption to my blossoming post-collegiate social life and the trajectory I had toward becoming a self-sufficient, finally ‘free!’ adult.  So, what, now we’re supposed to try to pick up where we left off?  Obviously, things have changed.  We wonder how we should feel about friends’ weddings we missed, the passing of loved ones that we couldn’t celebrate, not saying goodbye to family members who moved away, missing graduations, concerts, and birthdays, and about not being able to be a shoulder to cry on as often when your best friends needed support.  Consecutively missing all of these important life events can be surprisingly detrimental to our mental health, sense of identity, motivation, and especially our general momentum of moving from one day to the next with passion.  What’s more, the completely altered context of our lives during this last year has led to many confusing and negative emotions, with little frame of reference for how we should feel about decisions we’ve made and the things that have happened to us. 

In ethics, the concept of making a choice (with your own free will) gets foggier as you add more pressures, coercions, and constraints to the situation at hand.  The threat of spreading or contracting a potentially deadly and highly contagious virus seems to fit these criteria for taking away some of our autonomy in our decision-making, and I think that any guilt and apprehension we may feel for decisions we made during COVID should be considered with a grain of salt.  We may look back and acknowledge making what now seem like mistakes, but this was a difficult situation for everybody, and all of the compounding pressures that were placed on us often turned even our smallest decisions into mind-numbing ethical questions, forcing us to expose the bare bones of some of our deepest morals, values, critical thinking skills, and general scientific knowledge.  We aren’t absolved of the consequences of our actions simply because a situation is overwhelming and complex, but we can take comfort in knowing that we weren’t alone, and that most of the decisions we made during the pandemic weren’t simply ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ (like deciding between the emotional fulfillment of visiting a friend or socially isolating).  The risks are hard to weigh and all you can do is use your own best judgment and most important values to move forward.  Perhaps the pandemic gave us a healthy dose of realism by forcing us to recognize that the decisions we make are not black and white and that life requires making decisions that have no perfect outcome.

It’s frustrating to be tested by life in such an intense way for such a long time, depriving us of many freedoms, and this results in feelings of resentment, unfairness, and the impulse to want place blame.  Some blame may be fairly placed on individuals in positions of power who abused that power and opted for money or ego over the welfare of the less powerful, or on individuals who seemed not to care about much besides their own immediate desires and impulses, but bottling this anger up and turning it into resentment isn’t going to help anybody.  If anything, this year has exposed the vulnerabilities of our world and society that need to be remedied by education, compassion, and proactive social change.  Power struggles may always be present in the world, but it’s the people who contribute to careful long-term solutions and cultivating a collective happiness that keep the world from devolving into chaos and overwhelming anger at challenges that aren’t really anyone’s fault in particular.  

Moving forward, don’t feel discouraged.  Don’t feel like you haven’t been a good person, and don’t feel like you’ve wasted a year of your life.  The good news is that we can learn a lot from trauma and from the perspective we gain from even a low vantage point, and we can more fully appreciate what we took for granted.  I learned how dependent I was on deriving my sense of personal identity from being involved in different social circles, and I learned how to find contentment in relative solitude (although I was fortunate to be able to form a closer bond with my family, as many have during the pandemic).  The ‘stillness’ of my life during COVID-19 allowed me to really self-reflect, solidify my values, and to compare what my life was to what I want it to be.  I fully intend on rejoining most of these social circles, but now I’ve had the opportunity to reflect on their value, and to reflect on the value that I have as a person even without all of the social lifelines.

It is a mindful and healthy practice to acknowledge a struggle and then use it as something to learn from, instead of dwelling and ruminating on all the things that “could’ve, should’ve, or would’ve” been.  The past is not under our control, and it isn’t healthy to spend a large amount of our mental and emotional energy sulking about things that didn’t live up to our standards when we could instead be imagining and planning future possibilities.  We have much to look forward to as we collectively emerge from this crazy situation, and we can dive back into our lives with a renewed sense of purpose and a clearer image for our lives and the world in which we all play an important role.

Love Josh