Finding Quietude in Quarantine
Staying physically distant but socially close
These past three weeks have been the most turbulent of my life; plans canceled, packing up and moving across the country on a moment’s notice, a constant fear of infection and infecting.
And yet, my problems are minute in comparison to those of the newly-unemployed, the grieving, the nurses, the doctors, and the infected. I cannot begin to imagine the pain and chaos that surrounds this time for them; my mother is a nurse and my father is a doctor — simultaneously, my admiration and worry for them grow by the day.
This virus has affected all of us in some way or another, paradoxically uniting us under a common situation while forcing us to physically separate and withdraw.
It seems that as we shutter our windows to the outside world, distancing ourselves from the places we know and the people we love, we are presented from every angle with what is known: infection counts, mortality counts, unemployment rates, economic rates. Every channel is a constant stream of foreboding coverage that hints at the unknown we have all internalized and ask: when will this end? How will this end? What will society, the economy, my life look like once we see this through?
