We Had Fun And That’s Enough
In the News (The Atlantic): “Why Are People Nostalgic for Early-Pandemic Life?”
“Pandemic fatigue is fueling a bizarre sense of longing.”
Deep in the throes of the late-stage pandemic, millions of young people have grown to miss this time early last year. Their longing is captured in TikToks and YouTube videos that romanticize the trends, obsessions, and sounds of 18 months ago. These ‘early-pandemic aesthetic’ creators have built an online community tied together by a yearning for a time when the world seemed united in facing an uncertain future. …
“James Ikin, a 25-year-old in London,…’Back then it was just pure and simple,’Ikin told us. ‘You’re locked down, and this is what life is going to be for the foreseeable future for absolutely everybody. Whereas now you’re trying to plot a path forward … and it makes life more complicated again.’ …
“Sophie Feldman, a 22-year-old college student from Chicago, remembers scrolling through TikTok one day in August 2020 … . Lying in bed, she turned on her camera and recorded what became one of the most popular videos of the genre: …Feldman rolls her eyes and stares into the distance, blinking blankly. …
“It just sounds like a fever dream, like time isn’t real,” Feldman said. The cultural moments she calls out in her video felt like distant memories, but they had started just a few months before. Apparently more than 1 million other TikTok users felt the same sense of wistfulness (the clip has more than 4 million views and more than 1 million likes). ‘Ahh the hopeful part of quarantine’ and ‘Why do i kinda miss it,’ read the top replies. Scanning the comments, Feldman saw note after note of melancholy. ‘We were just feeling nostalgic for this period of time where we felt such togetherness, even though we were physically isolated,’ she said. ‘And I feel like that has dissipated over the past year and a half.’
Comment: Some conclude that today we are even lonelier.
My Response: Of course!
Comment: Today we have come out of our apartments where we were imprisoned and we are lonelier and the future is more uncertain.
My Response: Still, the pandemic taught us, it did not allow us to use our huge egoism. Otherwise, we would have driven ourselves into even greater stagnation. I believe that the pandemic has brought great benefits.
Question: So you have a very clear understanding that it came with an absolutely precise purpose?
Answer: Naturally. How can such a phenomenon pass without a goal, without a definite internal plan? Nature has everything according to plan. It has a beginning and an end connected together, and clearly goes from one end to the other. Depending on the reaction of humanity, we go through these states. We could have gone faster, better, and more easily with a much kinder result.
Comment: I want to reconstruct the events a little bit. We were connected, we worked, we flew to visit each other, we somehow moved around. And suddenly we were told: “Enough!”
My Response: Yes. We’ve had fun and that’s enough.
Question: We were separated, put in our apartments, the work places closed, tourist trips to each other, and so on. And all this was for what?
Answer: For us to try and realize whether we needed the kind of life we were in. Now the problem is whether we will return to this or not. There are those who resist and do not want to return. We hear and see it. And there are those who seem to agree.
Question: For us to return to the old connections?
Answer: Yes. But it will no longer be the same connections, it will no longer be the same pursuit and competition.
Question: Will there be any caution?
Answer: Not only caution, there will be a thing of doing everything at half strength, from the inability to do otherwise because we are practically forced to work. Just as slaves were forced to work in the fields, so we are forced to work in all these modern jobs today. We are struggling, but in general, we will have to return to our offices.
Question: You think that the question will arise, why is all this necessary at all?
Answer: This question is already arising.
Question: Was it important for the pandemic to lead us to this question?
Answer: This is the result of the pandemic, what it wanted to achieve and achieved. We’ll see what’s ahead of us. All this is just the beginning.
Question: Why do people have nostalgia for the beginning of the pandemic? They say: “We didn’t know what would happen then, but there was some kind of unity.” Why was there unity in the break?
Answer: Because we all found ourselves facing some kind of external threat that worked for all of us, against all of us, it doesn’t matter. And in this we felt together. It united us somehow, put everyone together in front of this whole disease, the virus. And it felt good.
Question: Does a person need this record? It shows that this is written in a person now.
Answer: Entrepreneurs and others are fighting to erase this record. But along with this, another wave rises, which says: “We don’t want to erase it, it’s good for us. We are in this state closer to each other and are more pleasant to each other.”
Question: Are you more for this wave?
Answer: Neither for this nor for that. As much as the second wave is more pleasant, the one that does not want to return to its metal machines, I think neither this nor that is correct. We must first realize what kind of future we want in general. And, first of all, what kind of relationship we want between us. And then we will choose.
Question: So the most important thing is awareness?
Answer: Yes.
Question: What will we choose then?
Answer: If we are aware, then we will choose life, life where we help each other in connection with each other and exist for this.
[291171]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/4/21
Related Material:
The Global Pandemic
Pandemic Part II: “Omicron”
“What We Can Learn From The Coronavirus Pandemic” (Thrive Global)
Discussion | Share Feedback | Ask a question