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The Unending Anxiety of Waiting for What Happens Next
The pace of change is coming at a breakneck speed while we’re all stuck in place
Near my house is a bank. Most other businesses around it are closed now, as per municipal orders. But each of the four times I passed it this week, the bank’s parking lot was full. People were withdrawing cash. Across the street in one direction, a gas station still operates, selling fuel for a fraction of the price it did a few months ago. In the other, a chain grocery store remains the lone operating business in a deserted strip mall.
As the rates of infection from around the world continue to curve skyward — as well as the numbers of societal changes imposed in response — the pace of change has felt increasingly, well, febrile. For many, time has lost all meaning other than to have seemingly accelerated. This might make logical sense. We’re consuming more new information more frequently, and juxtaposed against the general monotony of isolation, things now feel particularly unwieldy. On the one hand, there is a constant barrage of terrifying news and updates; on the other, silence and calm.
Meanwhile, the status quo is disappearing — at least for now. Francis Tseng, a fellow at the Jain Family Institute, is curating a list of “things we allegedly can’t have except that we can,” a growing compendium of announcements from organizations and governments granting things for which progressives have long advocated, only to be told they were impossible: Direct payments to individuals in need, free public transport, waived overdraft and ATM fees, eviction moratoriums, mortgage payment relief, free national park access, unlimited data, and on and on. As much as these changes are welcome, the speed at which they’ve been enacted is itself destabilizing. Then, of course, we still wonder how long these changes will stick.
There is another way time has begun to feel warped. There is a factor of duration we can’t account for. We ask each other, and ourselves: If this goes on longer than another two weeks, how will things revert back to normal? And when will we know they can?
It’s all beginning to weigh heavily. Even when people aren’t talking about it directly, you can hear the unease, the anxiety of living through…
