Author: Jonathan Clark

“What I’ve tried to do, in order to deal with this uncertainty and anxiety, is to find spaces in my life which I can do something about, and use them to provide islands of stability. For me, it has been about the rhythm of prayer, about taking exercise regularly, about keeping up with my reading. All of them would be easy to lose in a welter of obsessively checking the latest news. But insofar as I have managed to keep an even keel over the last months, I think those practices have been essential.”

“The pandemic has changed how many of us sleep, not usually for the better. The private worlds of sleep, in which we usually work through the past day and prepare for the next, have often been unable to cope with the uncertainties and anxieties of these past months. For some of us sleep has eluded our grasp completely; others have slept fitfully and only in the shallows, never properly resting. The ordinary strangeness of dreams has become still more bizarre.”

“It is clear from many lessons of history that violence does not root out violence, though it may change around who are the perpetrators and who are the victims. The challenge is to loosen the bonds of society enough that those who are oppressed are released, but the whole body of a community does not dissolve. It is to loosen, and then retie those bonds in a shape that more resembles justice.”

“The pandemic has taught those of us who thought we were completely in control that we’re really not – and a lot of us knew all too well that the power in our lives was not our own. The coronavirus pandemic for many of us has just added yet another thing pushing in on us, making our lives more and more difficult.”

“One of the deepest rooted human fears, even more so than the fear of illness, is the fear of the stranger. We are all hard-wired to trust most those whom we know best, sometimes despite the evidence. The pandemic has fed on those fears. Although there is no more reason to suppose that a stranger is carrying the virus than your family and friends, we are all inclined to believe that those we know well are safe to be with, and those we don’t, not so much.”

“The important thing is the destination: there is no extra virtue attached to going it alone.”

“During the period of lockdown, for many of us time dragged, slowly (while for others it zoomed – pun intended). Those who were already experiencing poverty and insecurity have mostly suffered more. Some with good incomes have found themselves saving large amounts as socialising is curtailed. It’s not fair.”

“It’s not at all obvious what a way out would look like from a pandemic. This coronavirus has proved very efficient at spreading itself, and very difficult to dislodge from society. The more we meet each other, the more opportunities for it to spread. And there aren’t many of us who would look forward to a lifetime of spatially distanced conversations with our friends and families. A way of living which allows us to meet each other without restriction or anxiety does indeed seem unattainable and inaccessible.”

“Reality is always messy, and especially so now. Living well in the midst of this time is about finding stories to tell that can give us strength to live as well as we can now, in the situation we’re really in.”

“It’s hard work psychologically, living in a world in which the boundaries and frameworks of our lives are always changing. If there is any comfort to be had, it is that the stress many of us feel is not because of a fault or weakness in ourselves. The situation itself is stress-inducing, so feeling stressed is perfectly normal. The question is how we support one another and look after ourselves, within and through this time.”