The one thing that won't die in the internet age - the instant, and wrong, hot take - for me is actually the hopeful sign that our way out of the pandemic year isn't in fact written yet. The nearly cataclysmic changes we've all experienced in the past year aren't minor, aren't things you just "get over"... and the massive implications for our society and our economics (never mind our politics) are things we can only begin to start figuring out.
And that's why I don't mind the "jobs will instantly return to normal" and "everyone has to stop wearing sweatpants and put on real clothes again" type hot takes. The instant gratification culture of immediate analysis and pronouncements has been thoroughly up ended, even if the media may be the last to really understand what hasn't happened, and what isn't happening, and even start beginning to make sense of where we actually are.
At the most base level... people died. I've been stunned at the number of conversations of the past few months - you know, those reconnecting "hey, we haven't seen each other for a year" post vaccination convos, and dinners and re-gatherings - where that conversation veers into frank discussions of loss and pain and death. More than half a million people died of Covid (that we know of) - random, often pointless losses of family, parents, coworkers. But often, just as surprising, the losses people share turn out to be the other deaths - not covid, but the other stuff of cancer, heart attacks. The reckoning of these losses, over 18 months, has really only just begun, in part, yes, because Trump lacked the basic humanity to properly put the losses in context. But separation, and the near incomprehensibility of losses on this scale, is also a big part of it. No one in popular media, really, has yet found the words, the context, for all this loss. We're just beginning to grope for the words.
Then, too, I think of the enormous life changes so many have experienced as a result of this strange surreal, and yes, lost, year. People who have made major, significant life changes over the pandemic. All of the people who put significant life changes on hold because of it. And so many who have changed nothing... but for who everything has changed. Six months ago, I quit my job and embarked on this new course of writing and living differently. Only today, did it occur to me that perhaps expecting everything to be sorted after only six months is, well, not very realistic. Extrapolate that kind of major upheaval in so many lives... and really, our culture has no comprehension of what is and isn't happening in people's lives, and the ways those changes impact economic and social life. Are people "going back to work?" What does work even mean just now? What is "going back?" So much economic analysis just now is slapdash, lazy, and obvious. It will take months, if not years, to sort out all the forces in play, and what they mean.
And sure, it seems frivolous to relate these near existential issues - life and death, work and purpose - to the more superficial parts of our lives, the daily business of consumerism and consumption that make our American culture hum. But that's the point, isn't it? So much of the frothy, frivolous exercises merrily rolling along in early 2020... are just gone. if nothing else, the pandemic was a forced pullback to "is that really important" that offered many a chance to reassess all sorts of choices And that's just the beginning. Stores have closed that will never reopen. Dining has changed. Vacations have changed. New routines are part of all of our lives. And it's routines and habits that really guide our interests and choices. And again... we're only just beginning to figure out what these look like, what they might mean.
Just one obvious practical example to finish: "planes are full again." It's the hopeful, meaningless, deceptive storyline that will drive this summer's coverage of travel and leisure. Domestic air travel is still well below half of what it was before the pandemic, losses that have nothing to do with leisure or vacation travel (and don't even start on the embers of international). It's business travel that was the backbone, and profit center, of airline revenue. Will it resume? Sure; some of it will seem essential, some will argue that face to face beats Zoom and win. But many won't. At a moment when the whole concept of the "downtown office" is in flux, major city to city air travel looks like a relic.And again, that has economic implications no one wants to face and has gone largely undiscussed.
It's an odd moment, this juxtaposition of the "now now now" internet world we have and the almost luddite realities the pandemic placed on our existence. It's an odd, fascinating place none of us expected to be, and trying to intellectually sort out what it means is useful, and necessary... and all but impossible when we also want it all figured out, entirely, as of yesterday. As you peruse that Vogue telling you to get out of those sweatpants, and take in those reports that lazy workers are reluctant to give up unemployment to go back to work... just remember, no one, really, has figured any of this out. Instant gratification takes too long... and maybe the problem isn't "instant"... it's that maybe we're beginning to figure out this life needs more than just... gratification.
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