Green shoots

After witnessing the spread around the world in the wake of COVID-19, we are one year from the moment life changed as we know it, of a global pandemic and the transformation of societies around the world. Along with the rest of the UK and the world, the city I have called home for six years has emptied of the richness of friends, connections and community.

Though not to conflate with the tragedies of bereavement, illness, front-line work, job losses and financial strain facing many, there is a sorrow all its own in the small losses each of us have faced when asked to leave behind the lives we knew, not knowing if we can ever get them back.

This loss of the comforting structure around our lives - of work, home and family routines, or merely ambling on city streets and in parks without the weight of social distancing, has left a space that I am not sure what to do with. But Spring is already growing into that space, and it is timely in so many senses; calling for regrowth, rebirth and new beginnings.

As I await the reopening of the world and the ever-changing new normal that each week brings, getting things in order has become a fluid endeavour.

Many of us missing human connection have turned to technology and the ubiquitous Zoom video call — dinners, pub quizzes, party games have all been requisitioned into the virtual space, in a hope to recapture the connections that we crave. When work brought yet more video calls, with each week my attendance has slacked; my enthusiasm drained by 'Zoom Fatigue', now a well-known phenomenon.

Much of the joy of human interaction is in non-verbal communication. Alighting our social senses involves body language, facial expressions, eye-contact, and that enthralling sense of alignment when bouncing off someone else. By video, I may be watching friends, family or colleagues, but also watching that little video of myself, compelled like Narcissus, unable to resist reflecting on how I look and how I am being seen by those I am trying to connect with.

Of course, a locked-down world without video calls or teleworking would likely be significantly worse — more socially isolating and economically devastating. But this doesn’t change the fact that the reliance of telepresence is contributing to my overall weariness, and maybe yours, too.

So what am I going to do about it this time around?

When my day job was furloughed (grant leave of absence with government financial support), I feared the loss of purpose as yet more of the familiar was changed. But it was in fact a small mercy, allowing me to breathe, rest from screens and Zoom, and brace myself for the tough times I knew were ahead, as once the temporary job ended I re-entered the job market at the worst possible time. Now that I am searching for work, I am plunging into the unknown in this most unique of times.

I want to be brave, and face the future openly, learning from the resilience we've shown throughout the pandemic, to be open to a better, brighter path going forward. For this, I can find inspiration closer than you may think.

I have been an avid nature lover since childhood. There is always a warmth in my heart when I remember the years of grazed knees, imagination and delight in the simple novelties of the natural world. The hours I spend under the sunshine and open skies, poking frogspawn or peeling birch bark, felt vital and 'right', and unencumbered by needing a purpose. This need for the sensory, the full palette of life beyond the screen was a truth immovable for so much of my younger life, but did I lose it somewhere along the way?

There is something about being natural spaces that is a release, allows me to breathe more deeply, and feel and think more openly and outside of the depths of my own head. Throughout this unique twelve months, the natural world has continued around us, giving a liberating perspective to the change so much of us fear.

It was still there all along, if only I took the time to see it, feel it, live it.

Life has certainly taught me over the years not to be sure of the planned-upon or wished-for, with an ever-fluctuating path something I have grown almost to need for its familiarity. When life changes course, it can sweep away the banal minutiae of life, at times in both terrible and freeing ways.

Trying to swim with the current, and living life in the moment, the precious sensory present, evokes the vibrancy of the life in our hands, and can help us thrive in change. There is always more to experience and explore.

For now, I will be keeping up my doses of nature and feeling the sun on my skin— finding those green shoots reaching toward the sky with each new day.