Lockdown balance sheet and a pinch of optimism
You can feel it since Easter - a kind of joyful anticipation, a cautious tension or, depending on the situation, anxious restlessness. The prospect that lockdown could soon be eased gives me a kind of belated spring fever. Although there will be no return to normality as we knew it before. Nevertheless, it will be easier to get used to the new normal than to remain in lockdown.
But it's not that far yet, it's still about persevering over the last few metres. That's why I'd like to take a brief look back at the last few weeks and what I've done: As you know, I have utilised the freedoms that the Federal Council gave us during the lockdown.
I have met friends - but only on a small scale, as permitted. I visited my mother for her eightieth birthday a week ago - with the required distance of two metres. I went for a walk in the local recreation area and walked through the empty Bahnhofstrasse on a Saturday afternoon with a post-apocalyptic feeling.
By spending hours on the phone, I discovered a hitherto hidden talent for encouraging people and cheering them up. I did free work to help people and the incredulous joy I felt for this simple gesture was better than money. I turned my old mum blogs into my own book and gave it to my loved ones.
I've been meeting for daily Hangout sessions with my work colleagues and found myself wanting to shout out to the heads appearing on the screen at the end of the session: No, don't go yet, I like you guys better than I ever thought possible. Above all, I was able to avoid sedating myself daily with alcohol against the stress of this exceptional situation. So there you go.
However, other things didn't work out for me. My little reading circle that I had planned for my family didn't materialise. I haven't done the spring clean yet either, or only in parts. I haven't managed to improve my son's French.
And I didn't make an inch of progress on my book project, which was already well advanced before the lockdown. I had fantasised about storming out of lockdown with the finished manuscript in my hands, but in the end I was all too often restlessly pacing around the flat instead of sitting down at my desk and putting the thing through its paces.
As an incorrigible optimist, I believe that not everything will be bad, just different.
That is my assessment, but it does not tell the whole truth. The truth is that much more has changed, subtly and subliminally - but we are still too close and therefore not in a position to recognise and name these changes in concrete terms.
At some point, we will look back from the future and from the new everyday life and say: That's where it all started, with the coronavirus, who would have thought it back then? Of course, not everything will be happy, because when is it ever? But as an incorrigible optimist, I believe that not everything will be bad either, just different. And even though I know that optimism doesn't go down well these days, I hold on to it.
Michèle Binswanger's diary at a glance:
- Zeiten-Paradox im Lockdown
- Ausgehungert nach Freunden
- Lockdown-Bilanz und eine Prise Optimismus
- Frühling und die Kunst, traurig zu sein
Michèle Binswangers reports on her experiences in the home office in her new lockdown mum blog. From now on, the mum of two will be blogging twice a week - on Sundays and Wednesdays. Her blog appears on www.tagesanzeiger.ch and www.fritzundfraenzi.ch.
