Through threads of conversation, listening and reflecting, two words emerge time and again as experiences disrupted through the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a matter of months, weeks, days, and hours, for so many people around the world, a sense of safety and normality was swiftly uprooted through the imposition of orders of physical distancing and confinement. In such an observation, a tendency toward universalisation is cautioned against, as for billions of people, safety has never been a daily assurance and normality has never been a source of assurance. How can the relative disruption of safety and normality begin to be comprehended, so rapid as it has unfolded? With curiosity and an acknowledgment of the limitations of my own lived experience, here I begin.
Safety is Relative
As a highly contagious virus spreads at a rapid rate, orders to ‘shelter in place’ and remain confined in one’s residence have been mandated by countries across the world. These orders have been enacted as protective measures, to help slow the spread of the virus and save lives. Accordingly, calls to work from home have been echoed by many employers. The recommendation or mandating of the wearing of face masks has additionally been widespread. In some countries, papers and proof of identity are required to leave one’s residence that are checked by police. All of these measures, though intended to increase collective safety, carry assumptions about what assures safety for whom. Orders to ‘shelter in place’ cannot be enacted for those who live without shelter, for those who do not have a house in which to confine. There are also many people for whom staying home does not correlate to safety, but rather the potentially fatal danger of domestic violence. Calls to work from home cannot be enacted for people who work in industries that center around manual labor or physical presence. For those who cannot work from home, a calculus must be made between the risk of economic insecurity and the risk of contagion. Wearing a face mask may result in more eminent danger than the risk of contamination for people who are racially profiled by law enforcement or others, for whom an outing to purchase necessary food and supplies to nurture one’s family can result in assault or arrest. Carrying papers and proof of identity may activate lived or intergenerational trauma for communities with experiences of militarised surveillance.
Safety is relative. Before the arrival of the pandemic, insecurity and threat to safety has long been a daily reality for billions. Structural and direct violence from violent social and political systems have made this so. The eminent threat of capitalism, racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and other forms of subjugation are viscerally felt daily by those who are oppressed. As Paolo Freire named, these systems are emergent from and perpetuate collective trauma that harms those who oppress as well as those who are oppressed. Privilege and power dance in a way such that while for many such trauma has been visceral and fatal, for some this trauma is unacknowledged and denied. The politics of race, class, and social status, all of which dictated the relative safety of individuals and communities around the world, have been exacerbated toward more eminently fatal ends through not only the virus, but also the response.
Tracing the path of such reflections from the micro to the macro, from the past to the present, I am left in and guided by the desire to think critically about my own experience and the experiences being lived around the world. In relationship to safety, what in this current moment is new? What about the threats of this current moment are familiar, and for whom? What responses undermine safety for some while reassuring safety for others? How can we hold with compassion the complexity of how people’s sense of safety is newly and differently undermined by the virus and various national responses? What will be the impacts to a sense of safety within oneself and in the world that linger long after confinement measures are lifted and physical distancing requirements ease?
Cessation of Normality
From past to present to future, another set of questions emerges around normality. Nothing in this moment is normal, and yet comments about creating a ‘new normal’ during confinement or ‘going back to normal’ following the crisis abound. Honouring the need to grasp a sense of predictability and stability in the chaos of these times, I also wonder about the impact of normalising this experience. Any semblance of what was, is, and will be ‘normal’ is valuable to problematise.
What was previously perceived as normal, for many people, was anything but desired or assuring. People subjected to oppression who have long been struggling to transform systems to uphold the dignity of their communities. In the disruption to global functioning we are currently experiencing, this is an opportunity for transformation, to new ways of being together that are just.
In this moment of confinement, physical distancing, and massive levels of psychological, emotional, and physical stress for people directly in the face of the virus and those sheltering as they can, trying to stay safe, this is no ‘normal’ to adapt to. There may be elements to which we can adjust and adapt to keep ourselves and others safe in the short and long term, however there are other aspects of this experience that may be best related to as temporary. We have lost access to many of the rituals that allow for collective meaning making of our experiences, including family gatherings, graduations, weddings, and funerals. Tens of thousands of families are in the intensity of the initial stages of grief, having lost loved ones to the virus. These families are deprived of access to funeral ceremonies, such an important element of the grieving process. And of course, there are those who face the fatal reality of the virus day in and day out in hospitals, care homes, and make-shift shelters. May we be gentle and cautious in normalising this current experience, so rife with fear, distress, and grief.
Casting a gaze into the future, when the crisis begins to pass, what awaits us is a new reality, a new way of being with each other and in the world. There is no ‘going back’ and I wonder what additional layers of grief may arise when the world ‘as we knew it’ is no longer.
The human species has previously undergone moments of mass transition of which our current existence is a product. In the immediacy and intensity of the current crisis, this may feel like such a moment, and perhaps it is. And perhaps, in several decades, this will be a distant memory, and we will gather together again, continuing our healing and our navigation of new challenges to being well and safe together on the Earth that holds us.
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