Social Distancing and “The Tempest”

I did something kind of raw today and made a video in which I talked about my own experiences with “social distancing” and social isolation. As I said before, I do think I have a jump on this in comparison with most other people and that there might be something I could add to the conversation surrounding the psychological impacts of all this coronavirus self-quarantine, which are very real.

It’s one thing to read poems and to talk about one’s writing process; that’s one kind of vulnerability. To talk about a difficult personal experience is yet another level of vulnerable, and I think you can tell from the video that I was searching for words and trying to be honest about my own experience. If that helps you make sense of what’s happening to you, then it was time well spent for me. I decided not to edit it and to just leave it as it is, because it’s just me talking, without a lot of forethought, and once you start editing something to “package” it, it probably loses any of the original virtue it may have had.

I tend not to hold anything back when I talk about my own unusual journey because I don’t want to leave it up to someone else to tell my story for me. No one is more of an expert than you or I on our own experiences. You can visit Wordplay’s Facebook page to see the video.

Social Distancing for Extroverts

Hand washing and social distancing: the watchwords of the hour. I’ve been practicing both to the best of my ability, but I can’t help thinking that the latter, while probably necessary, is rather a tragic result of the current situation. I’m naturally an introvert, so spending time alone isn’t nearly as difficult for me as it is for the extroverted majority—and yet even I recognize that humans are social creatures and need other people. Most people can’t even seem to make it at home for more than two or three days during the holidays before they’re ready to bust out of the house, so I’m sure the quarantines are going to be very trying psychologically for many folks.

Of course, there also lessons to be learned on the ways in which trying to take care of each other can be accomplished in unfamiliar ways. I was going through the drive-through at Starbucks today when it occurred to me how many germs were probably on my Starbucks card, which I was getting ready to hand to the barista, so I wiped it off front and back with hand sanitizer. Apparently, that does not keep the card from working, though there might be a limit to how many times you could do that. (It’s too bad you can’t do the same thing to money.) Trying to give people extra personal space at the grocery store and not touching any more surfaces than necessary also requires thinking about things in a new way.

Whether it’s good news or bad news, I don’t know, but the fact is I’m so used to surreal conditions that this crisis is mostly just more of the same for me. I won’t be able to frequent cafes for a while, and the libraries are also closed. I had to scramble to find things I didn’t want to run out of once I realized people were starting to buy things up; I’m living with uncertainty and wondering how long current conditions will hold, just like you are. And yet, it’s exactly the type of thing I’m familiar with, how life can be turned upside down in the blink of an eye. I’m not happy about any of it, and yet in some ways I personally feel less isolated than I did when my own surreal adventure, if you can call it that, began 10 years ago. Now I know other people also know what it feels like to be isolated, anxious, and to some degree helpless, to see things spinning beyond your control.

It may be ironic that I, one of the world’s champion introverts, am so transfixed by the prohibitions on getting close to other people, but it’s that aspect of our current reality that’s really captured my imagination. Entire novels will be written about our current predicament; the one I would write would deal with the tragic aspect of not being to touch other people. It seems like a metaphor for so much more, for some kind of malaise that has perhaps been hidden for a long time but takes its visible shape in the form of a virus. Am I saying we made ourselves sick? It’s not that exactly, but more that there’s a kind of symbolic truth in the virus. How strange that it would have made its appearance at a time when we’re already so divided politically.

We will probably learn a lot of things about ourselves by the time this situation is over. One of the most interesting questions to me is how people will handle this unprecedented opportunity to practice introspection. Whether any profound changes come out of it is anyone’s guess, but the chance to get in dialogue with the Self (in Jungian terms) has never been better.