Una Mullally: We are changing, so why aren’t the systems of society?

A friend of mine in a band known for relentless touring, once told me a story about them arriving back home after a long stint on the road. When he pulled up to his home, he ended up sleeping in the van that night, even though his actual bedroom was right there in front of him. “We are ostriches,” he said, “and tour is our sand.”

Throughout the pandemic, we were repeatedly told that it’s easier to lockdown than it is to open up, the intimation being that a lockdown – as dramatic and destructive as it is – has a blunt simplicity to it, compared with the messiness of re-emergence. This messiness is not simply logistical in terms of society. We have also internalised it. We are products of our environments. As we repeat behaviours, we form habits, and when a context changes it can be hard to click into the new rhythm, even if that rhythm was once very familiar. Between Friday and Saturday last week, everything changed. The restrictions were lifted with the drama and surrealism of a magic trick. In front of his podium, the Taoiseach pulled a rabbit from a hat, and in a puff of smoke, the pandemic was gone. In reality, that’s not exactly the case. Covid-19 still exists, loads of people are still going to get it, but we all know the reasons why the Omicron variant is not as worrisome.

I think a lot of people who have been waiting so long for the pandemic to peter out will wonder why such a seismic moment isn't landing with a feeling of huge release

We’ll known in time whether the Government will regret this messaging. There’s little point in reminding people that the pandemic isn’t over when what is being communicated is the opposite. For now, I think a lot of people who have been waiting so long for the pandemic to peter out, will wonder why such a seismic moment isn’t landing with a feeling of huge release. When the capacity to make decisions was so blunted, when our choices were so curtailed, when our options were so limited, it can take a while for our worlds to expand, even when the pubs and restaurants and clubs and cinemas and gigs and theatres and matches and parades and weddings and conferences swing their doors open again. Energetically, there will be a feeling of tentativeness, maybe even dullness, maybe even “what’s the difference?” – a symptom of forgetting what your old life was like.

The first step, I suppose, is gratitude. Knowing what we should be thankful for – our resilience, our capacity to adapt, our survival – needs to be clocked. We need to take the time to do that. Savouring good news is something we often skip when we’re rattling our brains and hearts for a reaction rather than a response. You might think things like why do I feel nothing? Why is the impulse still to complain? The reason for those feelings is down to the length of time we’ve been in pandemic-mode, our sympathetic nervous systems on the fritz. The other reason is apprehension about false dawns. Sure, things are okay now, but what about later in the year? If we look to Taoism for comfort and inspiration, which isn’t the worst idea, it’s said that overly focusing on the past can lead to depression, overly focusing on the future can lead to anxiety, whereas focusing on the present can bring peace.

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There can also be an impulse to swap one existential challenge for another, which goes something like: sure, the pandemic appears to be abating for now, but what about the climate crisis? Or a war in Europe? Or this economic system or government that I can’t stand? Or the next variant? Our minds have been stuck in dread mode, and all of the psychological tools we’ve built up to navigate that don’t just get packed away immediately.

It's not as though people are firmly divided between the 'back to normal' crew, and 'the pandemic has changed me, so here is my new life' crew

I had a pretty hilarious moment with two strangers in a pub on Friday night, the final night of the curfew. One was pessimistic, he had resigned himself to the idea that we’d be in another lockdown by Easter. The other was ecstatic, ready to live life to the full from 6am on Saturday. On one hand, there was pessimistic resignation and, on the other, the framing of personal happiness and potential as something solely at the mercy of environmental changes. This stark contrast missed a piece in the middle, that nothing really changes unless you do, and that one’s approach to life feels static if you’re using old tools.

And it’s also not as though people are firmly divided between the “back to normal” crew, and “the pandemic has changed me, so here is my new life” crew. Social change is hard, systemic change is hard but, fundamentally, it’s people who change, and then they bring those changes into society, which begins a much larger and longer process. So if the pandemic induced self-reflection and personal growth, then how can those processes be reflected by the State? Irish society was already in this demanding and exciting mode: we are changing, so why aren’t the systems?

The faultlines of systemic issues became chasms prised open by the pandemic. And so the greatest failure of this time will be one where we don’t take charge of what we can control, don’t face up to what we know, don’t confront what is wrong, that we choose to draw a line under a time (for now), rather than learn and grow from it. That’s the pandemic bonus we really require, whatever happens next.