Let’s not go back to how things were
Dear Readers,
As a writer who works from home, I have spent a lot of time in my house over the past four years.
When my city locked down, life didn’t change that drastically for me, at the beginning. There had been occasions in the past, over the course of a long New York winter (I hate the cold), in which days would go by without me leaving the house. There were times I didn’t see humans other than my family members for stretches of time.
But as the Coronavirus lockdown lengthened into weeks, I began to feel a gnawing sadness indoors.
There was the grief for those suffering - the constant sirens an hourly reminder of that - and the fear of what this would mean for all of us. But there was more.
I began to realize that it was not the big things in my life I was most mourning the loss of – trips, a feeling of relative security, events. It was the little moments I longed for. Among the everyday routines of work, cooking meals, doing chores, and other mundane things of life, I missed the unexpected charming diversions that gave meaning to the everyday. There was no more spontaneity. There were no interesting faces of strangers to observe, no strangers' eyes on me. No tea at the diner on the walk home from my daughter’s school.
The pandemic has given a lot of us time to reflect on the things that give us meaning, to miss the people and situations we may have taken for granted, and realize what matters to us.
It’s also thrown us into a new way of living. Nearly all of us have experienced changes in the way we work. Many of us have lost our jobs. Others have jobs that are suddenly fraught with previously unforeseen danger.
We’ve had to think about food, and toilet paper, and the possibility of scarcity – something most of us have never had to concern ourselves with. An Instagram post I saw yesterday pointed out that if you had been born in 1900 you’d have lived through World War I, the Spanish Flu epidemic in which 50 million people died, the Great Depression 10 years later, then the beginning of World War II, all by the time you were 40 years old.
Of course, we’ve endured hardships of varying kinds over the past few generations, and there’s no comparing trauma and crises. But going through upheavals on the scale we are now can change us collectively, and change society massively. We’ve always known so much is wrong, but sometimes we’re so wrapped up in the everyday that we are too tired or busy to find the way to change something. Or, we’re too accustomed to the status quo to imagine anything different.
It takes events out of our control for us to realize what we can control, at times.
I did an informal survey among people I know who are living under lockdown, to ask what sort of things this new way of living had revealed to them. Or to put it another way, what had changed for them that they’d like to see remain changed going forward, even on a return to “normalcy.”
Given how much of our life we spend on work – both getting there, doing it, feeling stressed about it, it’s no wonder that a change in how we work was top of the list. For those with office jobs, the top of the list was the five-day work week.
Studies show that no one is productive five days a week, eight hours a day. In fact, when Microsoft piloted a four-day work week in Japan without any cut in pay, productivity increased by 40 percent. The same meetings that previously took 60 minutes now took 30. The company also began saving money on electricity costs, which fell by 23 percent. Extending this outward, a shorter workweek would also mean less greenhouse gas emissions, and less crowding on public transportation.
Yet here we are chained to an office, away from our kids or other interests, putting in time, because that is how we’ve always done it.
Two others who lost their jobs said the experience made them realize they never wanted to fully retire. That having time to both work and engage in things that interested them made for a more fulfilling life. One of them noted, “I used to think I could easily enjoy not working at all…until I had to.”
We’ve also been able to spend way more time with our kids. Which, in some ways is great; in other ways it’s extremely hard (see: work with no childcare). Back when I started working from home after giving birth to my daughter, it wasn’t always easy (and I had childcare then!), but it meant I was able to spend much more time with her in her early years than I would have if I had an office job. I also became much more efficient in using the childcare time I had to get things done.
Another common theme for many who weighed in was the change from the relentless busy-ness of our lives, pre-pandemic. The micro-optimization of time for productivity and the general pace of life necessary to acquire just the most basic of necessities feels like insanity with some perspective of distance. It feels more insane when you look at reports laying out that since 1987, productivity grew 5 percent annually across industry sectors, yet compensation never grew more than 2 percent in any of those years. We have collectively borne the brunt of more demanding jobs and responsibilities, yet it’s getting harder and harder to earn a living in the same amount of work hours. With less leisure time, we also end up having to pack in all our socializing, chores, family time and errands into less time as well. If we all had more time for doing nothing, we might find we are more creative, have better memory retention and longer attention spans.
Waste is a big one, too. I remember as a child, my grandmother scraping out every last bit of a pot or can, telling me she was a child of the Depression. One reader told me that she was amazed at her own paper towel and toilet paper consumption. Just being aware of not wanting to waste any, because it was in short supply, made it last so much longer. Food is being destroyed, smashed, and dumped because restaurants no longer need it, while nearly 23 percent of households don’t have enough money to buy food. That is a broken system, and one that many were bearing the brunt of before this crisis - the pandemic just landed it into a news report.
Another person expressed surprise at how little we need as essential: food, medical care, shelter, a few items of clothing, and the infrastructure that keeps all of those necessities going. Another realized how much money she would previously spend on things that were superficial, or experiences that entertained, rather than seeking out real connections with people. Slowing down the pace of life has made many of us realize what a basic need it is to spend time with others, and how simple that can look – a conversation, a hug, a walk. One person even mentioned eating slower. Others have rediscovered the magic of mailing letters and cards.
The Earth is showing us the madness of the way we lived, too. The air outside my Brooklyn home smells like the countryside. An article entitled “Now We Know How Quickly Our Trashed Planet Can Heal,” notes:
“The world is too much with us,” the poet William Wordsworth wrote in 1802. And so it is with us these many years later. But there is another world, too — the one outside our windows, the world that enfolds our world — and it is far too little with us in the getting and the spending and the worksheets of ordinary life.
The pandemic has given us “an unexpected space for wondering.” Though we are closed up in our homes, many of us, our imaginations have time to contemplate the way we might change the way we live our lives, when this all ends. When big things shift, the cracks that show give fertile soil for change. As Leonard Cohen said, those cracks are “how the light gets in.”
We’d love to hear your thoughts on the ways the Covid-19 crisis has revealed things you would like to see change in your own life or the world. Reply to this email with anything you’d like to share.
Amber, Senior Writer at Lioness
What we’re reading this week…
On the topic of reevaluating everything in our lives, the author of this essay in The Paris Review weaves in her knowledge of fairy tales as she tries to make sense of a life that is now unrecognizable. As she homeschools her sons, teaches her classes online, and searches for bread flour and yeast, she can barely remember the concerns of a life just a couple of months before. As she puts it: “Our whole kingdom is spilling out of itself, and there are holes everywhere.” It’s one of the most beautiful essays we’ve read in a while.
In this week’s edition of CEOs as cult leaders, founder and CEO of SoftBank (also known as the company that pumped $9 billion into WeWork) compared himself to the Son of God as he was barraged with criticism over his failing investment strategy. Prior to this messianic excuse, Masayoshi Son also invoked Yoda, telling investors to “listen to the force.” Pleading his case on an investor call, he noted “even Jesus Christ was misunderstood.”
New at Lioness for the summer, our intern, Jayda Hinds. This is her story:
I am Jayda Hinds, an American University student majoring in Public Relations/Marketing. I was born and raised in Trenton, New Jersey-- a small town where a lot of people don't have the privileges required to leave.
I viewed college not only as a way out of my town, but an investment towards my future where I could help my mother and disabled brother move out as well. My strict grandparents didn't like the idea of me going to D.C for college. Instead, they advised me to stay home and “help around the house.” I didn't listen, of course.
As a black woman, I notice how often marginalized voices are demonized in the media and I don't like it. At school, I am often the only black girl in the room, having to explain the importance of Black and POC issues to my professors and other students. I want to enter the field of communications myself, so that I will be able to accurately portray marginalized communities with insight and without any negative stereotypes.
In my spare time, I am obsessed with sustainable fashion. I love experimenting with different clothing styles, and am always finding new ways to revamp my old pieces. When I'm not thrift shopping or scrolling on Pinterest, I'm writing poetry and prose. Last year, I was included in Eber and Wein's "Best Poets of 2019" list.
Jayda’s going to be posting from Lioness’s new Instagram account, which we are building into a “Humans of New York” style account for untold and under-told stories. We’d love to see you there, and on Twitter.
Last but not least, the idea of sharing a tip with a journalist might bring images of Deep Throat and dark parking garages to mind, but in reality a news tip doesn’t have to be earth-shattering for a reporter to be interested in it. Read more on our blog about how to get information to journalists, and as always, reply to this email if you have a story you’d like to share with us or the media. We’d love to help.
The team at Lioness