People are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
After a punishing year grappling with a deadly pandemic, as spring rolls around again and we mark the one-year anniversary of our changed way of life, a return to normalcy may be approaching, my recent polling has found.
For the last year, I’ve asked poll respondents whether they believed “the worst is yet to come” or “the worst is behind us.” Generally, I’ve found more pessimists than optimists. But in recent weeks, I’ve found that dynamic has finally reversed: More believe we are on our way out of the darkness.
I’ve also found a sharp drop in the percentage of people who say that they are very concerned about themselves or a family member getting COVID-19, and in just a month, we’ve seen a doubling in the percentage of respondents who say they’ve gotten the vaccine.
“Normal” feels just around the corner. But as we begin to climb out of this past year, it is worth considering: What will go back to normal? And importantly, are we ready to?
For millions of people whose jobs have been fully remote this last year, big questions linger about how those workers will be called back to the office. And for millions more who have not been able to work from home, particularly lower-income workers and essential workers in industries like healthcare, though they’ve been back on the job, that doesn’t necessarily mean life has been “normal” these past months, especially as they have disproportionately borne the costs of this pandemic.
As the anniversary of lockdowns came around, I’ve been reflecting on what it will be like to go back to how things were. I’ve been among the luckiest, one of those able to do my work completely remotely, but this week, I had to dip back into a slice of pre-COVID-19 life and stop by the offices of the Washington Examiner to participate in our panel series on the future of the GOP. There was something weirdly novel about old, previously mundane rituals: struggling to find street parking, fumbling to fish my security badge out of an overstuffed handbag, getting a quick sandwich at the cafe down the block.
The prospect of going back to “my old life” makes me feel a bit like being a child getting ready to go back to school in the fall: preparing to see faces you haven’t seen in months, maybe breaking out some different clothes, bracing for the pace of life to accelerate. (Marketers are tapping into this feeling. “Re-emerge in style with 15% off,” declares luxury online retailer Net-A-Porter.) There’s lots to be excited about as we approach the end of the pandemic, everything from small perks like seeing movies in theaters to profound joys such as hugging grandparents and seeing old friends.
But for me, the first day of school always meant excitement as well as nervousness, and I confess some nervousness today about what’s next. Not from a health perspective — I’m eagerly anticipating getting the vaccine as soon as I can and can’t wait to be rid of the fear of this deadly virus. Instead, I feel worried about losing the small blessings that have emerged in the midst of disaster.
I am among the two-thirds of people in the United States who would report having had both positive and negative changes in their lives as a result of the pandemic, essentially taking lemons and having made lemonade. Pew finds people saying things like the slower pace of life, spending more time with their children, and the time to focus on hobbies are examples of unexpected upsides people have reported in their lives in the last year. Personally, I’ve relished the increased ease of saying “no” to unwanted commitments and the time to tackle some recipes I’ve always wanted to try. Some of these might seem like small things, but it isn’t wrong to reflect on the last year and look for silver linings where you can find them.
We shouldn’t fear returning to something more closely resembling “normal” and should take the opportunity to try to redefine “normal” for the better. Once vaccines are readily available, we should make it possible to go back to as much of our old lives as people want to. But acknowledging that there might be some things the last year changed that we’d like to keep is also OK. We can be glad that the worst is behind us, mourn what we’ve lost, and at the same time be grateful for any small blessings in our lives that we’d like to hang on to into the “new normal” after all.
