There was a fleeting moment in the middle of the first lockdowns, when everyone nurtured sourdough starters and kitchen gardens, when I thought we’d emerge from the pandemic more human, more connected with nature, more deeply connected with one another.
Instead, as my kids returned to school in real life this week (first time in 13 months) and I returned to flying for work, I felt thrust back into the capitalistic machine, a robotic cog, moving through the airport at the highest efficiency and working my various jobs until late at night each night, because there were not enough hours in a day.
How’d we all get knocked to our knees, our lives so small and contained, social justice reckonings in every direction, but not try and interrogate or upend America’s workism, nay, workaholism? If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s that nothing about the way we live is inevitable. So why not collectively live better, do better, and be less beholden to profit, growth, status, wealth? We can individually opt out, sure, but the larger systemic forces remain so stubbornly the same.
It exhausts me. I am so tired already, after just a week or so of being fully vaccinated and a handful of days no longer being a teacher and caregiver at the same time. It feels like the companies I work for and the clients we’re chasing and the objective standards for “success” are all unchanged, despite the fact I am walking around in new skin.
Me: Weren’t we supposed to get a reset of our values?
Friend Tim: Nah, we just have to work harder to make up for the past 13 months.
TOO REAL.