By Thomas P., Co-op Student
“So you mean to tell me it’s not March 2020?”
I feel like I’ve definitely heard that sentence in an ironic sense a couple times these past two years. Time seems to pass very strangely in a time where the basic concept of social normality is changing. Ok, big words, I know. I’m not necessarily wrong though. Normal has changed. Though many people, including myself, do wish the old normal could return, the hard truth is that it won’t. The dice have already been cast.
Eventually, social distancing will fade out. Masks will be worn far less, yet I’d guess perhaps more than before the pandemic. The damage will have already been done. No, not damage. Change. This change has already begun. Many people feel just that little bit more uncomfortable around those with a cough nowadays. It seems that a lot of people have developed a COVID-19 hypochondria. The anxiety of having, or receiving, an illness. According to Healthing.ca, “the root of treatment lies in accepting that nothing in life is certain — which, as anyone with illness anxiety will tell you, is much easier said than done.” With this anxiety, whether one is a hypochondriac or not, comes a more heightened awareness of sickness around you. Hopefully, this will be for the best in terms of social safety in the long run. Greater general hygiene is never a bad thing, especially with a world that finds itself more and more connected by the day, even in a pandemic. Hygiene aside, the long lasting effects of an often mind-numbing pandemic, will likely leave a social mark on the generations most affected by it as of today.
It seems as well that yet another thing the pandemic has caused an awareness of is what we’re missing. During the worst of the lockdown, it felt as if the only thing to do was re-watch Tiger King and Bo Burnham’s Inside, two Netflix hits which, mind you, were released nearly a year apart. No matter how long a life you’ve lived, a year is still a long time. For even more of a time warp, the first recorded cases of COVID-19 were on December 19, 2019 – nearly 750 days ago. That’s 24 months. According to Kidshealth.org, a child born from that time, by now, would be able to speak more than 50 words, kick a ball, and be understood at least half the time. Although with the continuous stale cycle of the state of things in our political and social world as is today, that last part may or may not be too surprising.
For me, my first day of true lockdown was on my birthday. Happy Birthday! As a student who was highly involved within my school community, in extra curriculars such as D&D, AGSA, and theatre club, I very quickly went from being an outgoing and extroverted junior high school student to a very mellowed out high school senior. Different people age with different circumstances. I have no problem with the fact that I had to grow up fast with the pandemic, and I’m surely not alone in this sentiment among the approximately 630,000 other high school students in Ontario. I finished my grade nine year on a stage, still during a pre-covid time. My grade ten year on a bike ride, during the first lockdown. My grade eleven year with the closing of my laptop, after a long and mentally demanding period of online learning. As for my grade twelve year, I’ve still got a little ways to go before the path becomes clear. Even still, I think I’ve got a pretty good idea where I’m headed. If anywhere, it’ll simply be up north to attend University.
Just before the lockdown, I’d just started working at the 2020 Purple Woods Maple Syrup Festival, which closed only a few days into my time there. Now, as 2022 comes to a start, my time at the Oshawa Museum as a co-op student has nearly come to an end. Even through multiple lockdowns and a global pandemic, one simply has to keep moving. It’s sometimes hard to accept how fast time has gone and simultaneously how painfully slow it goes. At the end of the day though, that seems to be one of the many ultimatums of the human experience.
There is a quote I’ve scribbled into an old notepad which sits in some forgotten cupboard in my closet. Even with my efforts to find its author, I have no idea who said it. According to the note, “Everybody has a start date, one day that start date will be followed by a dash and an end date, so it’s what makes up that dash that matters the most.”
I’d say it’s quite accurate. For its benefits and faults, the pandemic has sparked a piece of human history that will be written about in some history textbook one hundred years from now. Our history. Millions and billions of stories. That’s a very sonderous feeling, the knowledge that everyone everywhere has been affected in some form by the history that’s sparked around us these past two years. Yet every experience is different, even if it’s in some slight fraction of a way. This sickness has caused a million butterfly effects, whether we know of them or not, and we’ll be seeing the ripple effect of this point in time carry on through the generations for decades to come.
Citations
https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/checkup-2yrs.html
https://www.who.int/news/item/27-04-2020-who-timeline—covid-19
http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/educationfacts.html
https://www.healthing.ca/diseases-and-conditions/coronavirus/hypochondria-in-the-age-of-covid-19/
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