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It’s not often that the world is forced to stop dead in its tracks and told to stay home. Historically it has happened only during pandemics, threats of military attacks, or in sci-fi movies where zombies roamed the earth. But despite all the difficult changes this pandemic has caused, it might be refreshing to consider what good has come out of it.
For one, people who are staying at home are much more aware of their immediate surroundings. Big box hardware stores are not suffering as other industries are — homeowners are paying rapt attention to remodeling their homes, planting and manicuring their yards, and upgrading their environments. So there’s that. Historically low interest rates are causing refinances that permit homeowners to keep their heads above water, and homebuyers are still having to compete with multiple offers on homes they have only seen by video-chat tours.
Children who were used to having short vacations from school are now spending an inordinate amount of time with the people who made their lives possible — their parents. Moms and dads who once scoffed at raising teacher pay across the state or the country might well have changed their minds over how important (and difficult) teaching really is. And kids are finally learning from parents — their first and foremost teachers in life. While school teachers are important, they can only supplement what kids learn at home, academically and behaviorally.
Employers are no doubt in shock over how their employees need not be under their noses every second to find them at their most productive. In fact, giant social media purveyor Facebook is encouraging at least half of their employees working from home to continue to do so long after the threat of COVID is gone, saving them on liability, rent, and office space. Those remote employees are developing the skills of multi-tasking, taking Zoom meetings, and petting their dogs as they work in their sweat bottoms all day long, often rarely designating a day as a day off from work, but setting their own hours as long as their work gets done.
The “seniors” among us (who refused to use that word to describe them) may now be paying attention to keeping their immune systems healthy where once they gave it little thought. And those who exercised outside the house or in gyms are considering fitness not only a luxury but a privilege to stay fit if at all possible.
More dogs are being walked. And more neighbors are saying hello and stopping for a chat.
Social interaction is now making a transition from Skype or FaceTime to backyard gatherings with distancing involved. No reason not to laugh and have a good time when you can and when it’s safe. But no longer will we take these precious visits for granted. Seeing our loved ones are now considered a gift instead of an occasional chore at holiday time.
Air travel and trips abroad will become precious indeed when they become feasible. Those who were forced to cancel travel plans in 2020 will savor those plans even more in 2021, when infections have (hopefully) faded and airports, airplanes, and cruise ships take the lead in health safety just to stay in business. We can only benefit from these changes.
And then there is personal change. Pivoting to reinvent one's self is no easy task, but soul-searching and self-care are happening everywhere simply because, in these times of sheltering, it can. Learning a new language, starting a new online business, tuning into self-help seminars — everything is possible if you make the time for it, and that is now available in spades.
As for relationships (notwithstanding instances of abuse), those that were in flux before COVID hit may be either be going through their last stages of deterioration or have reinvented themselves, finally taking stock of the person they once fell madly for. Things are coming to a head faster than they ever would be in real time before the pandemic hit, with some finally getting the courage to end things and others finding ways to work with what they have. Either way, change can be good.
In the past, it was not unusual to witness rudeness. Even at the beginning of the pandemic, some people were only out for themselves. But now, in many parts of the country, you can be shamed for not wearing a mask in public — for not caring about your fellow man. Hard to recall a time when our citizenry ever felt that strongly about the social grace of doing no harm to others, except when they collectively gave up luxuries for the war effort during WWII. To see someone stockpiling things that our soldiers might need abroad was considered a sin. Now it amounts to distancing and wearing a face mask until a vaccine is found. Until the entire populace is tested, we can't know how many asymptomatic ticking time bombs are walking around taking no precautions.
We must, of course, honor those who did not make it through the pandemic. The 100,000 whose lives may never have come to such an abrupt and lonely end long before their time, whether their underlying health conditions would ever have taken them to the end without the virus. But I think they would smile at some of the changes mentioned here, knowing that the world they left behind may have changed for the better — for families, for some businesses, and for humanity.
The “new normal” will not look like it did a few months ago, but perhaps it might even be better, with people savoring life, family, travel, and even their ability to change with the times. People will remember these days, and their children will someday tell their own grandchildren about the Pandemic of 2020. We can only hope.
