of the lockdowns in UK (with the help of a diary)

Its messy, I know. Literary.

Humans are adaptable creatures and therefore have now adapted to their indoors, blended in with their sofas, chairs and screens, and their memories of going out started to fade.

I, for instance, had to look into my diary to recall when was it last time kids were at school and, indeed out and about, and it is shocking to see that the orange shaded areas are adding up to nearly a year.

Although we are incredibly lucky to have enough space not to kill each other indoors, there were moments of frustration and moments of being overwhelmed and upset, and I did find myself sometimes curled down on sofa crying, just wanting to shut myself away from everything. I can’t even start thinking how hard this must have been for others.

What I am most concerned about is the effect this long isolation will have on mental health of young people. They are loosing social skills and this is going to be hard to build up. I know, we adapted to screens now, we can adapt back to people and trees but can we really?

I would like to think we all crave the same things: ability and opportunity to connect, explore, experience, but perhaps, or more likely we don’t. Some of us have bigger need to control, collect, secure, expand, show off.

All of the current events lead to us to re-evaluate our society, our place in it, the way the countries are ruled and managed, how is the politics executed and how people respond to it. The massive role that social media play in the disinformation and manipulation of masses. Which media are truly independent today? Why are people not bothered to seek truthful information, why are they so easily mislead? Have they lost the capability or will to critically analyze data? I cannot believe what I hear or read from people I thought were relatively “normal”. And that worries me. I wish things were easier, maybe people want them to be easier and easiest is just to skim read the fb wall. But that just won’t cut it. Its not like when we were in 80s back in Czechoslovakia and there were only 2tv channels and the news overview at 7.30pm before the main movie. One news for everyone. No internet. No constant flow of notifications. Nothing to be overwhelmed with. We need some boundaries on our pathways, we need to make some curbs otherwise we get lost. We need to filter out / block out a loads otherwise we go crazy.

I am so happy I gave up on my social media years ago. I only connect with people via phone, email and whatsapp. Nothing else. And that’s more than enough.

Then there are movies, books, music. Or staring out from the window.

Try taking a moment to do nothing. Its healing.

And after that moment take a phone and make old-fashioned call to your mum, dad, sister, uncle or whoever you care about. Just to say hi. You might end up having surprisingly good chat.

We’ll manage, will survive. But kids might be scarred and changed by what they’re going through right now without us knowing…and that’s frightening because there’s not much we can do.