The Days of Lockdown week 6

 20 April 2020 - Sanity and sanitisation

At no other time in history have people washed their hands as much as they are doing now. Signs of sold-out sanitiser have never been so commonplace. It makes you wonder what the environmental impact of all this handwashing is: how much has our water consumption increased and what’s the effect of all that soap? In any case, the message has sunk in that we need to keep our paws pristine.

Human contact has been deeply sanitised too. Social distancing ensures that nothing ‘untoward’ will occur: no kissing, or even holding hands, let alone sex with someone you’ve just met, or conducting an illicit affair. Our hands are clean, and our behaviour could withstand the scrutiny of the Puritans. “Cleanliness is next to godliness”, we are taught, and we’re doing a great job at the moment.  

One wonders, though, what effect all this sanitisation has on our sanity. The lack of human touch may not only cause depression and weaken our immune system, it can apparently also make us less empathetic. We need to be touched to be touched. The longer the lack of contact continues, the more chance there is that people will start caring less about the ones we’ve been trying to protect with this lockdown. We already see resolve crumbling, people starting to wash their hands of the whole business.

Another side-effect of the lockdown is that life lacks excitement. However, humans have come up with a brilliant scheme to keep the adrenaline flowing. More and more of my sanest friends are falling under the spell of conspiracies. The theories have to become increasingly outlandish to keep the rush going: more fear and outrage are needed to keep the adrenaline-junkies pumped up.

Clean Mind. Source: The Pioneer

In order to keep my own sanity, I have had to clean up my social media accounts. Last week I talked about ‘snoozing’ people, but this week the deluge became so great, I had to stem the tide by unfriending and even blocking some. I have started weaving what I call a ‘web of sanity’ around me, with friends who still retain their critical faculties. So, corona is not just making people sick, it also exposes sick relationships and helps clean them up. ‘Every downside has an upside,’ soccer legend Johan Cruijff used to say.

The fact is, we don’t fare so well in a sterile environment, both mentally and physically. We literally need the microbes on our hands to keep our immune system informed. We need to get our hands dirty, get stuck in with something concrete to do, or we lose our sanity. Hands and minds, the outer and inner world, that’s what it all comes down to now. If we can find a balance, we may be able to clean up our act as a species, and perhaps even cleanse our souls.

  

The Days of Lockdown - Day 17

2 April 2020

Day 17 – Grounded

Here we all are, at home, most likely in front of a screen, at some undefined time of the day and we’re not supposed to go out. We’re grounded. Because we’ve been bad - or so some people say. We’ve been neglecting our duties; we’ve been shirking our responsibilities and now we have to stay put. We’ve been messing up the very ground we walk on, we’ve run the climate, nature, our own physical and mental wellbeing into the ground. Our plane has been literally and figuratively grounded; our ship has run aground.

OK, I’m sure you get the picture (while perhaps also wondering whether I wrote all this without the use of a thesaurus). Everything has ground to a halt. So, what’s the best way forward? Ah, there is none. Well, maybe one: becoming grounded. Wait, what? Yes, grounded. As in the sense of being sensible, down-to-earth (seriously, did she use a thesaurus?). While our heads are spinning with incessant Covid updates and frustrations are rising, this is a perfect moment to get grounded. To feel the earth beneath our feet, to breathe slowly, in a more natural rhythm, and listen, really listen. We’ve not had time for this, but now we do!  

Today, I gained some ground in this area by getting my hands into the ground (I know, I’ll stop soon, I promise). I got some little pots and bags of dirt, some seeds and natural fertilizer and planted some vegetables, which I hope to nurse in my windowsill and grow on my balcony. Getting one’s hands dirty is such a calming thing to do. Every day I will check to see whether the soil is still moist enough, whether there are any signs of tiny stalks shooting up from the earth. It will be a slow process, just like it will be a slow process to get out of this corona crisis. Hopefully, by the time the outbreak is over, and we can break out of our confinement, the plants will be big and strong and so will we.

We will be like Maximus, grabbing some dirt and rubbing it in our hands, getting ready to face our challenges. We will kiss the ground of our new-found, new-invented land. And hopefully, we’ll be more down-to-earth about what we can and cannot, should and should not do. Ah, I see my head is still in the clouds: I need more grounding! 

Today's installment is dedicated to Jade Wah'oo Grigori for his inspiring cup of tea!

The Days of Lockdown - day 15

31 March

Day 15 – Lethargy

This week, I’ve not felt very motivated to get out of bed, plonk myself in front of the computer screen and throw some motivational blahblah at my students. The students themselves also seem to lack enthusiasm, umph, joie-de-vivre. I’ve been putting off writing this blog for a couple of days, because do my 11 readers really care? Yes, if you’re reading this, you make up 9% of my readership, so my deepest gratitude to you for taking the time! But then, I remind myself that I am writing this lockdown journal mostly for myself, to keep sane, to keep track, like marking lines on a prison wall. This is the stage of lockdown I knew would come, but was least looking forward to: lethargy.

The students and I do a choreographed dance. We all know the moves; we’ve rehearsed them beforehand. We take all the steps, but with minimal effort, to create a sloppy version of normalcy. We all know that none of this matters. Is it really important to analyse the imagery in the balcony scene from Romeo & Juliet? Of course not, but most of us play the game, do the dance, because we’re not sure what else to do. This is the dangerous stage.

Lethargy can turn to apathy and grow into depression. What to do? The ‘normal’ school stuff just won’t do anymore. In this, I see a glimmer of hope. The kids were most animated when we were simply engaging in conversation, talking about what things might come. Tonight, the PM announced that the measures will remain in place until at least the end of April, maybe longer. That’s four more weeks of ‘Distant Learning’. I’m going to have to come up with something helpful, something these youngsters might find useful in their current situation, something communal, something fun.  

Many nights during this lockdown, I look up through my roof window and see stars. When was the last time we could see so many stars in this city? I lie very still and try to tune in to the hum of the universe. What is it telling us? I feel there is an answer stirring deep inside me, but I can’t catch it yet. If I find it, my dear 11 readers, you will be the first to know!

The Days of Lockdown - a tale of our times. week 2

27 March

Day 12 of lockdown – the art of boredom

This weekend is apparently a crucial one when it comes to the spread of the virus, so Minister Grapperhaus (yes, that’s a name) has implored us to really stay at home the coming days. “Yes, your weekend may be more boring than other times,” he said, “but there are other things you can do, like have a good conversation, read a book, turn on Netflix.” I thought it was interesting that he mentioned these things in that particular order. He, like me, grew up in the days before internet, before mobile phones, before Netflix, and television was something that started at around 6 p.m. and there were only two channels. So, what did we do to entertain ourselves?

Having a good conversation was the first thing Grapperhaus mentioned and that’s exactly what we did. I remember long evenings, sitting around with friends, philosophising about everything we could think of. We would discuss music and deconstruct a certain baseline, or comment on the sound quality of somebody’s loudspeakers. I guess me and my friends were a bunch of pedantic intellectuals, but we sure knew how to pass the time.

Reading loads of books was normal. For my final exam – and this part counted for only 10-15% of my final grade – I had to read 30 books for Dutch, 20 for English, 12 each for French and German and 6 for History. That’s 80 books in about 20 months, about one book a week. It did seem a bit much, but not outrageously so.

There has been one time in my life that I was in true lockdown. When I was around seven, I was locked in my room up in the attic for three days, only allowed out to use the bathroom. I was Rapunzel in her tower, but with hair that was too thin and short and no prince to save me. You might think that I had done something truly horrific to deserve this, but believe me, it is merely a reflection of the insane household I grew up in. So, what did I do to not go crazy? I did a lot of “niksen” (more on which later), I stared out the window, I day-dreamed, but above all, I read. As long as I had my books (which I hid under my pillow, lest they might take them away), I had a whole other world to live in. A big book of fairy tales was my favourite. I have no mementos, toys or trinkets left from those days, except that very book. The three days went by quicker than I expected.

The Dutch concept of “niksen” suddenly came back into vogue when Time Magazine published an article about it last year. Niksen literally means to do nothing, to be idle or doing something without any use or purpose. Pottering about. Eve Ekman from Berkeley University says “the research is strong when it comes to the benefits of slowing down, from emotional perks (like reducing anxiety) to physical advantages, like curtailing the aging process and strengthening the body’s ability to fight off the common cold.”  If “niksen” can help fight the cold, maybe it can also help fight off Covid-19! Allow yourself and your children to be bored. Plenty of studies show that boredom has a wide range of benefits. It sparks our creativity, makes us more inventive and also more altruistic. These are the characteristics we would like our kids to develop, aren’t they?

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Of course, there’s always Netflix. But might it not be nice to step away from consumerism for a change and allow ourselves to just be? So, I wish you all a pleasant weekend full of “lekker niksen”! The rat-race will resume soon enough.