Embrace The Path Forward: Reentry (Part 1)

As the pandemic begins to subside, more people become immunized, anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers aside, as our herd immunity improves, and we are released back into the real world, many of us will find the world a little different.

I think we will all that the world has not so much changed as we have changed. That we will find something new within ourselves.

A new way of dealing with the world.
A new way of dealing with people.
A new way of approaching the world beyond our inner world.

For introverts, this past year of lockdown has been unusual in its enforced solitariness. There have been no museums to meander through aimlessly taking notes while listening to the walk-through recordings. No bookstores to wander about, picking up stacks, and depositing them on your favorite table by the window, just leafing through them at your leisure. No quiet libraries where you can be alone but still be with other people.

For extroverts, this past year of lockdown has been some of the quietest and most introspective time many have spent alone. A wonderful opportunity to have learned something new about themselves.

But learning something and choosing to do something new are very different things.

We have spent lifetimes making the world a busy, loud, productive, and anxious place. Filling days with lots of rushing around, for both work and for play.

I believe we all crave something slower, quieter, deeper, and much more meaningful.

I think our psyches hunger and thirst for something more subdued, especially on reentry.

You may remember a few weeks ago that one of the Space X Starships blew up after landing. I think the basic mission went smoothly, leaving and reentering the atmosphere, then initially settling back onto the earth. But obviously, something was different upon reentry. Something had changed on the way to settling back down on the surface. Either the spacecraft, or the ground, or the fuel was different. There was a different kind of combustibility upon settling in. The same is true for our lives. After more than 12 months of doing something unusual, some things will simply not return to our pre-flight “normal.”

I think it is an unreasonable expectation, and unnecessary stress we are placing on ourselves that we will settle back into life exactly as it was before.

There have been many poems and prose pieces stating that the pre-pandemic times weren’t normal. But a series of abnormalities and aberrations we made accommodation for, things we adjusted to. And even when we had to struggle to stay in the game, we still insisted on calling the game normal, all the while berating ourselves for failing to keep abreast with everyone else.

Hopefully, this past year has given us some time to stop, think, reassess, and realign our lives and our minds. Our spirits have had an unexpected timeout, a time to rest, and time to regroup.

And I think we all would hate to find that we spent a whole year longing to go back to a lifestyle we did not want in the first place.

What can we expect?

Expect that reentry will be rocky.

That the world will feel more different, jittery.

Expect that human interactions will feel different, even overwhelming, at first

That the world will sound noisier.

Some of our favorite foods won’t taste the way we remember them, not because something has changed in their preparation, but because has changed within us. And, it is okay.

Be gentle with yourself…

Let’s talk more in a few days about choosing ways to proceed.

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