The Lightness of Being

What if the big post pandemic question is not how we come out financially but how it affects our brains? Recently the question is popping up more and more, the idea that we may become impaired and are starting to feel and act weird. The material costs have been examined and evaluated by the pundits and gurus and at this point nobody really knows anything. We are unable to put a final number to the damage, unable even to suggest an ETA. Weak links in the economy, entire industries and sectors already suffering thought they had five years to innovate, re convert or become more efficient. I got news. Game over. Warren Buffet famously said: “It’s only when the tide goes down that you learn who’s been swimming naked”.

Just as nobody saw the pandemic coming -or had any idea on how to tackle it- we have no recipe for recovery. We all agree that airlines, hospitality sector, retail, malls, cruise ships, live concerts, parties, theatres, museums and spectators sports are the most affected. (Take notice, kind reader, that the above activities are closely linked to the senses which procure a smorgasbord of pleasure. Maybe not all flights were pleasant -some were hellish- but the temptation of flying away remains undisputed).

Here’s where the mind comes into play. What happens to a brain suddenly weaned of pleasure? How do the senses react to lack of stimuli? Not well. Eros is usually ascribed to sex but it is much more than that. ‘Tis life. It is beauty, parties, music, nature, food and dance; a tingle that starts shyly in some small corner of your body or a gale-force reaction that sweeps you off your feet. The plague put an end to all that, to something the French call l’insouciance, which is to live light as a feather. Until a few years ago (the Eighties?) we lived worry-free. Then along came AIDS and killed free love; it made it unthinkable to meet someone and go have unprotected sex. We started equating love with danger. The 9/11 happened and everybody and anybody became the enemy. L’insouciance went out the window. Where do we go to complain that we have lost the space for chance encounters, for improvising and leaving on a whim to go explore our world? That there is no place for dreams? This is a prison with no term.

I hear that we will go back to normal. Which normal? We have been losing ground to space and freedom for 40 years, giving up the place where we used to live in insouciance. I fail to see normal coming back.

The streets are a menace. We are all suffering from varying degrees of agoraphobia. Death fills the horizon and the space lost by Eros is occupied by Thanatos. We know that the main thing now is to survive. No question. But my cotton-wool brain, on pause mode, cannot wrap itself around a life without Eros.