In Times of An Endless Global Pandemic: Inner Closeness And Other Thoughts
I am a writer living the dream during a premature midlife crisis in the midst of a global pandemic. I started writing this novel two years ago because I needed closure to things I didn't fully understand. In a writer's world, this is often a gift or a curse. For me, it was both.
My novel is about time. It took me a while to see that. When you're writing a long-form piece, the purpose behind the narrative takes a long time to reveal itself. Sometimes, it takes the entire written work before we find out what it is about. For me, it happened two chapters from the end. I realized that the questions I've been meaning to ask have always been there.They've merely been mutating, traversing between my thoughts.
The pandemic is still happening out there. The world has stopped for a while because of the Coronavirus, a disease that doesn't require introduction. It has spread faster than the News and reached places further than the internet could ever have. Earlier in March, we were told to stay home in order to flatten the curve, because the amount of sick people would soon outnumber the health system's capacity all around the globe. Hospitals, healthcare workers, the hope that we would defeat the virus before it defeated us. All saturated. We haven't flattened the first to begin with and we are about to face it again.
The protagonist of my book seems to think she has all the time in the world in her hands. She doesn't and she'll find out soon enough. Those who know me well would say I'm a ruthless writer, a stark contrast with my otherwise compassionate and romantic nature. I do not protect my characters from the harder realities of life. Every writer flirts with the idea of playing God, of sewing together the stories of characters who initially didn't relate to one another. In this writing process, to fuse the avenues of these lives is to create something the writer might not be ready for, but, we don't hesitate to take the risk. The possibility of foisting these characters’ fates into a new world order feels powerful and intoxicating.
My novel is about choice. I have never had time to do anything I wanted to do. There was always something in my way. Family, jobs, to-do lists. Now, I have all the time in the world, don't I? In a pandemic, we are just perishable passers-by amongst these geographic islands we've built, so what does all the time in the world even mean? It means now. It means there's no such a thing as all the time in the world. It means I've waited long enough to do so many things. This realization is overwhelming, yet healing.
As I write this piece, New York City is about to go on lock-down for the second time. And, as the pandemic goes by and we all continue to talk about social distancing, I keep thinking of the idea of closeness. Not social closeness but an inner closeness with ourselves. That moment in life when we silence the voices of the world and only listen to our own. This unfamiliar moment of truth. Am I happy with the person I have become? What do I stand for? Who am I when no one is watching? It's a hard task but, there couldn't be a better time to do it.
Finishing my novel was cathartic and beautiful. My protagonist realized that having all the time in the world is a fallacy. Nevertheless, she endured the choices she made. Suddenly, time wasn't a burden anymore, it was freedom. She could never control time, so she decided to walk with it. After all, it's not about how much time we have, but how we will spend it.
There's no greater bridge in the world that connects people than a story. As we blindly walk towards an unsettling future, social distancing is essential to contain the spread of the Coronavirus. Yet, we might find the time to practice inner closeness too. For us. For those we love. Perhaps, we'll learn something new about time, people and ourselves. When social distancing is over and we're able to assemble again, togetherness will hopefully have a different taste. I daydream about the day we'll return to the streets with eager arms to embrace the new world we might come out to. A world where we've been truly given a second chance. A second chance to consider time. Ours and everyone else's. A second chance to contemplate the privilege of choice and be grateful for it.