Post-Pandemic Anxiety
When Boris Johnson announced his lockdown roadmap in February we can all relate to the sentiments of hope, excitement and relief that were felt nationwide. However, equally, I would be lying if I said that the announcements did not also awaken a rumbling sense of anxiety.
Despite its challenges, lockdown taught me to enjoy the life I had in front of me. A life I had ignored due to my tendency to place happiness in chasing the unattained. By being forced inside, I was also forced to stop thinking about what I hadn’t yet seen, achieved and experienced. A global pandemic was beyond anyone’s scope of control and so I had to start thinking about how to enjoy the world within my boundaries. I made a decision to not crave a parallel life but instead do a daily check-in with the life I had already been given.
This decision was also made easier by the fact that everyone was in the same boat. No-one got a ‘Get Out Of Jail Free Card’ based on their status, income, upbringing or fame. The exhibition of individuality was no longer possible or welcomed as society was driven indoors and there was an uncommon mass solidarity from the suffering experienced due to the pandemic.
However, following recent announcements, there is a foreboding nervousness permeating through chats with colleagues and friends. Monday catch-ups no longer focus on humorous exchanges about repetitive weekends and instead are filled with discussions on how we will use our ‘new found freedom’. Conversations revolve around the need to rush as restaurants get filled and the price of aeroplane tickets rise.
With this I can feel an all too familiar itch to ‘follow suit’ as I fear falling behind. Despite feeling the happiest I’ve felt in years the dormant volcano of social pressure and the need to prove my value has awoken.
Happiness is “not good for the economy” Matt Haig writes in his Notes on a Nervous Planet “We are encouraged, continually, to be dissatisfied with ourselves”. If we were happy with what we had, we wouldn’t need more. We live in a world that relies upon us ‘needing more’.
Despite the pandemic already showing us the fragility of where we put our value and joy, why are we rushing to return to this way of life? It seems delusional to re-fill our lives with these pageantries and hope that something else won’t come along to make them disintegrate.
I believe we have a God who knows the vanity of accumulating ‘wealth’ in our physical world.
Matthew 6:25-27
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
The truth is we can fill in the blank where it comes to “do not worry”. Jesus could have equally said “do not worry about your value, your job, your holidays or even what other people think about your life”.
It is not a suggestion, it is a plea. Jesus pleads with us because he knows the emptiness of the lies that tell us we need blank to feel complete. He is begging us to stop, to look at the birds of the air, to connect with the nature surrounding us and to check-in with the God who created it all. This is how we not only achieve happiness, but also retain it.
He pleads for us to run our eyes up from the sunbeam towards the sun. We realise that there is a source that not only sustains our life, but cares for it.
In a world which turns our anxieties into commodities, to be content becomes a revolutionary act. However, it is an act that can only be achieved by knowing God. By knowing the creator of the earth cares for us and knows our needs better than we know them ourselves, we can rest assured that we are loved and taken care of.