“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” – Viktor Frankl
Two weeks ago, on a remote day of instruction thanks to a true winter snowstorm, the likes of which the area has not seen in years, I finally felt "over" the pandemic. Logging into class that morning, I relayed this sentiment to my students, who were as war-weary themselves. Some of them nodded in agreement, while others stared straight ahead into their cameras. It's not that I hadn't felt "over it" prior to that day, but those moments had been more tied up in fear, anguish, disgust or generally overridden by another, stronger emotion. Etymologically, weariness draws meaning from physical exhaustion, obviously, but shares deeper roots with notions of wandering and intoxication. When I reflect on how the past year has felt "weary," at times, it has encompassed those alternate meanings as well. It's been like walking through a dream in some moments, and in others, as though Kafka himself handed me some real wicked shit to try and now we're both suffering a bad, paranoid trip.
Our school demands that we consider the curriculum in light of the stressors of the outside world and that we maintain a degree of normalcy for the kids' sake while leaving their mental health to appropriately-designated professionals like counselors and social workers. While I do not think I should be personally counseling students, taking a moment to relate to them as people is something that reaffirms that we are all going through something and it is OK to be tired or frustrated. Normalizing mental weariness and stressors is a frightening prospect for many educational professionals and others in positions of authority (including politicians) because it tends to be associated with weakness and uncertainty in American culture. For many students however, their feelings ARE very certain to them. To not acknowledge said feelings and to power through the pandemic as though we will all come through on the other side of this as though nothing disrupted our pre-pandemic flow for a year plus is delusional and destructive to each of our selves.
Within the same time frame of coming to terms with taedium vitae, I recently stopped blow drying and straightening my hair. While it may seem like an odd thing to pivot toward discussing in this post, it marked a milestone of acceptance of my self. From teenage years on, I have tried to change the texture of my hair. Not really having any luck in the long run, I at least succeeded to mask nature through sheer determination and a colossal waste of my own time. No one had ever specifically told me wavy hair was undesirable, but it was never shown to be desirable either, which left me to draw my own conclusions. While some white lady finally embracing her natural hair texture isn't revolutionary, it does raise the question of the degree of pervasiveness beauty standards and norms have in our wider culture. More broadly, embracing the natural within myself has been a way to escape the existential weariness associated with cultural conformity that extends far beyond the past year. America's obsession with getting back on the road to normalcy in the post-pandemic world has gone through many iterations in the past year - from virtue-signaling to a particular base, to publicly flouting basic hygienic and safety precautions, and extending to an extreme and abject rejection of reality (eg; the rise of conspiratorial theories, the failed Capitol insurrection, et al).
However, the post-pandemic world is not here yet, and to pretend that going back to business-as-usual is necessary now is misguided and dangerous. To stave off more weariness for the future generations, now should be the time to take stock in whether business-as-usual is even worth going back to. The obstinate American idealism that preceded so many national disasters, like the entirety of the 1920s, for example, points to the idea that American rhetoric has continually been incapable of acceptance of reality. There's a degree of insanity to American (or any nation's version of) exceptionalism that prevents the cultural messaging from attending to the suffering and subsequent healing at the time of a crisis. It takes a pragmatic mind to address issues in the now rather than looking toward a way to reverse course and recreate a simpler past or to barrel through toward a better future. The biggest concern I have moving through this entire year of quarantining is that many Americans will come out having learned little to nothing about themselves and our society. Reflecting on the present would go a long way toward understanding how best to provide support for all members of our society to stave off suffering for future generations coming of age in the post-pandemic world. That would start with being truer to ourselves.
‘There is a still deeper source of activist faith and activist nihilism in a profound taedium vitae, in a malaise in historical existence, in a deep-seated spiritual impotence of meeting life on its own terms, and consequently in a will to escape from the burden of existence into a paradise.
