And here we are: summer ’21.
Last year I mused that we would be lucky to see a needle by July, and I’m happy to report that I underestimated things. Many have their first shot already, and appointments for a second jab are piling up. Things are looking, dare I say, hopeful. We are looking around at what’s happening in the US and Europe: people going to concerts, eating at restaurants, watching soccer matches. Hopeful, right?
And yet I feel there is simmering anxiety, at least among those of us who are not extremely successful business owners or captains of industry. Most of us have had sixteen months of having our lives changed, forced to stay at home, to work from home, often by ourselves or sequestered with our families or roommates. And that’s sixteen months of reflection about our lives, our desires, how we see our situation and what we want the remaining years of our lives — living and working — to look like. And for many, the idea of “back to normal” is a non-starter.
For many, “back to normal” means being underpaid and overworked — something that hasn’t changed during the many lockdowns that have been imposed on us during the pandemic. Many workers unable to leave their homes and without an office or commute to separate work/personal life report finding themselves putting in more work hours than before COVID hit our shores. The idea of “back to normal,” being forced back to our offices — or alternately making our ill-fitting home offices permanent; forced into the same inequitable power dynamics with the same CEOs and managers in place above us, back to sitting through pointless meetings which ironically disrupt our ability to get our work done, back to toxic work culture; it’s just not happening for many of us, or at least that’s what a voice is telling some of us.
Something has changed.
Even for those of us with reasonably well-paying work, the stress, the needless hurdles of corporatist bureaucracy, the aisle too easily created for those with aggressive or psychopathic tendencies to succeed in front of more qualitatively considerate candidates. It’s exhausting to think about.
Something is changing. Inarguably something needs to change.
The problem might sound like who leads the charge? Who goes first? For lack of a better example (this is a blog, not a Masters thesis), I suspect some of us are looking for a Spartacus — an individual who embodies rebellious-heroic traits who will allow us to follow their path and emulate their courage. But here’s the thing: we like to focus on famous individuals who rose to battle against a lopsidedly large system but not the many people who encouraged them or stood to the edge of the frame. Popular culture would like us to have reverence for the idea of “individual genius”, but “individual genius” is a bit of a myth, and as much a hindrance for those seeking change as it is an inspiration (for whichever point on the political spectrum you occupy). Success for any individual is inestimably the result of a series of support systems (aka people) and scaffoldings (aka people) raised by a wide array of anonymous — you guessed it — people in support, except in popular culture it inevitably appears as the tireless work of a singular individual. And I hate this lazy cultural habit of ours, and how it serves to propogate a system which no longer serves us. Not to talk like a filthy Socialist, but if we had better means of imagining organized community and labour groups affecting change perhaps we would be able to see that change is accumulative and collaborative…lest we wait for some dude in his garage to have an epiphany.
I look forward to this revolution.
