Pandemic Solitude and Existential Crises

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During a recent walk I thought about existential crises and the pandemic. I thought that it's a shame that we spend so much time speaking about depression rather than looking for a new reason for being, a new existential identity, or goal in life. We treat the search for a new identity, due to the pandemic as if it is a depressive moment but I think this is wrong.

The pandemic has changed whether we can socialise, and how we socialise. It has changed whether we agree to be indoors, or whether we prefer to be outdoors. It also shapes whether we want to be near crowds or away from them.

I was looking through photos on my phone last night. Since 2018-2019 I haven't done much socially. The last event was the World XR forum in Crans Montana, before going to a Geneva film festival. Since then it has been around five years of solitude. Three of them are due to the pandemic.

Too many people have been brainwashed into thinking "once I fall sick with COVID once I'll be fine". Others have been told that this is the new normal, and they just accept it. Yet more people think "oh, but I need to work" or "but my children need to live a normal life." The result is that for people, like me, who want to work towards COVID zero this has become an improbable aspiration, and that's where the existential crisis comes in.

When I looked through my photos I saw that people with their own families, spouses, children etc, continued to live normal lives, despite the pandemic. My social life, on the other hand, has been destroyed, hence the existential crisis.

I could easily call it a depressive event. I could easily say that this is depressing, and that I'm in a depression, but the truth is that I am not. I had an existential crisis, and it would have been labelled as a depression by some, but it wasn't. I always got up in the morning, studied for two or three hours, showered, ate, went for my two to three hour walks and continued to focus on the present. I was never paralysed by depression or stuck with a feeling of futility.

I redefined what I read, listened to or watched, to avoid being reminded of what I am currently incapable of getting, but having said that I grew to be happy with what was possible. Walking, cycling, studying, and recently running.

Today is Valentine's day and I have no expectations or desire for love. We're in a pandemic, and I have learned to enjoy solitude, and the more I am exposed to reminders of what life could have been, the more numbed I become.

And Finally

The point of this point is to encourage people to stop thinking about depression all the time, with all of its stigma and more. I think we should embrace the exitential crisis for what it is, especially during a time when so many of us have to reinvent our "raison d'être". Our reason for being. We have had to redefine who we are, and what we want out of life, to cope with pandemic life. Life is not back to normal yet, and I refuse to accept what it is now, as normal, hence the existential redefinition.