Three Thoughts From Lockdown
WWII was probably annoying
Rachel Megan Barker, a highly caffeinated, itinerant feminist, and political organizer, checks in from quarantine with three thoughts she was able to corner and shove into a gunnysack.
by Rachel Meghan Barker
The myth of deciding your fate
A thing that no one tells you about huge events in history is that people were probably really annoyed that it screwed up their plans.
I had never really imagined, till covid, the feelings of someone before WWII being like “well this is really horrible because I had the next two years of my life all sorted in my mind, and now this is happening and it’s really messed that up”.
But people must have felt that.
The comparisons between WWII and covid can get very stale and tired very quickly, but I have thought a lot about that particular idea - that the grand narrative of the event, where everyone was pitching in and playing their part - is somewhat invented in hindsight and in the moment there must have been so many people looking at their plans for the future and watching them slip away in the face of what was happening.
The idea that you can make choices about your own life that are, if not entirely free from external influence, fundamentally ones you will be able to pursue without those influences entirely derailing them, is of course a deeply privileged one.
But it’s also something that feels like this strongly held ideal that then clashes with, looking back at history, how everyone’s stories seem incredibly bound up in the collective fates of those around them.
***
Living space
I have lived in so many different places in twenty seven years, some of which I have felt very at home in and some in which I have not.
But something I am realising during lockdown is how hard it is for me to feel comfortable with one living space for any length of time - and of course, that isn’t helped by spending 90% of my day here.
But I think more than that, there is such an adventure to new spaces - to being able to walk into a different home and it be yours for a little while, before moving on to another place - that having the same space be yours for an indefinite amount of time does slowly start to feel incredibly stifling.
And then I wonder if I just need to rearrange it somehow to make it new again. If that would be enough.
***
Sometimes it’s not about lockdown
I think most of us have been on something of a mental rollercoaster, of one or another, during all of this.
But a thought trap I have found myself in, at this point on numerous occasions is “I probably feel this way because of lockdown”.
“I probably feel overwhelmed because of lockdown”, I say to myself - a person who has, for the past ten years, found themselves feeling exceptionally overwhelmed about once a month.
“I probably feel directionless because of lockdown”, I say to myself, a person who was definitely struggling with that very same issue right before lockdown started.
“I probably am struggling to read that much because of lockdown”, I say, a person who always struggles to get through her reading list.
It’s been important for me to remember that sometimes, just sometimes, not everything that is going on in my brain is about lockdown.
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