Sydney rediscovered something of itself during lockdown.Credit:Rhett Wyman
Ah, remember those good old days: calendars empty of social engagements. No alarms, no frenetic pace, few cars on the road, great parking and – even better – no parking tickets.
All across Sydney, dormitory suburbs filled with commuters became communities again, where people walked on the streets and stopped and said hello to each other. A return to a simpler, slower Sydney, when all there was to talk about was the show you had streamed the night before, or the new meal you’d cooked from scratch because you had time: Everything pared back just to the essentials, so that the superfluous crap just fell by the wayside.
I find myself preferring to use Zoom now rather than meet in real life, saying no to social engagements, and feeling more content with less busyness.
I’m not for any moment suggesting this has been an easy era for most. Those who have lost loved ones to coronavirus, suffered with it themselves, lost jobs, had to care for elderly family or help navigate children and young people through home study, bouts of poor mental health and isolation.
As we emerge collectively from the chrysalis, life remains challenging for many. There were tears not just from kindergarteners at the school opposite my home on the day they returned, but also parents, teachers and older students.
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A neighbour who has started back at work in office told me she’d had some teething problems getting things done. First she forgot her computer charging cord, then her headphones (to the annoyance of her office mates), then on the third day forgot her laptop altogether. “I just don’t know how I ever left the house before,” she said.
As we head back to school, offices and on public transport, we are all slightly tentative seeing life with new eyes now.
It’s like the grief that occurs after significant losses: of people, places, jobs, identities and relationships. No wonder many of us are longing for lockdown again and what comes next. It could be the time of the “great resignation” and the “great break-up”. We are in transition, not just the seasons, but ourselves.
It is a clarion call as loud as a koel’s cry, to ask as the poet Mary Oliver once did: “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
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This new normal’s for the birds: I’m missing my lockdown nest
Source: Philippines Alive
