Lights out: my liberating year in lockdown

One night, when I was little, a severe storm knocked out our power. Our house became a magical maze of flickering, candle lit walls. Quiet but stirring. As my family hunkered down around the table, squinting to see the markings of our playing cards in the dim glow, I imagined we were pioneers of old.

I wanted it to last forever.

Eventually, of course, electricity flooded the house with a jolt: severe, stark, and void of magic. I felt sad, like I’d lost something precious that had passed too quickly.

During every storm after that, I demanded probability statistics from my parents on the likelihood of a power outage. Well-meaning, my mom would offer to turn off all the lights for a candlelit evening, but I refused. It wouldn’t be the same knowing that we could flip the lights back on at any time. The temptation would be too great to return to our typical way of doing things for the sake of convenience; it was partly the lack of recourse that made it a thrilling adventure.

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It’s kind of how I feel about the forced sabbatical of lockdown. I could have created the conditions. But if I knew I could resume normal life at any moment, it would have been harder to resist the inertia of the status quo and its expectations of me. I wouldn’t have learned the lessons.

I’ll say the thing that others might be afraid to say: I expect to feel a little depressed when things return to the pre-COVID normal.

And unless I challenge the instinct, I’ll chastise myself for it: This is what I’ve been waiting for. Why am I not happier?

But that’s the thing: I haven’t been pining for it. (It’s so subtle, the way the societal narrative can slip through my filters and disguise itself as my own — not unlike a sophisticated virus.)

When a friend asked me what has surprised me most about life in lockdown, I replied, “How little I’ve missed,” without thought and before I could stop myself. That’s the real truth.

Sure, there are things that I have missed: cafes, happy hours, shopping, movie theaters, yoga classes. Yet even in the moments when I miss these things, I’m more aware of the literal and figurative noise they add to my life.

I’m not tormented by this blind impulse to go somewhere because there is nowhere to go. This year, stillness is no longer a tolerated if unorthodox way of living; it’s compulsory. For me, it’s like saying dessert is compulsory. Oh well, if you say so.

I have time for mindfulness. I sense the passage of time through the slanted patches of sunlight on the floor, my apartment like a sundial. I cook my meals. If variety is the spice of life, for me at this moment, spice is the variety of life, and it’s delicious.

I feel a greater connection to the natural world and its rhythms: the tree leaves outside my window blooming and falling, the morning and evening birdsong. In turn, I know my lifestyle during this time is kinder to my fellow creatures. The things that matter most to me — reflection and focus and simple pleasures and quiet — are at the center of my life and not the fringes fighting for space.

I am gratified by the simplicity of my days. With wonder, I observe the slow unfurling of my peace lily plant as it blooms.

Unnecessarily defensive, I rush to assure people that I’ve had more opportunities for social interaction than perhaps the average person throughout the pandemic. And that’s the reason I’ve done so well, I say to avoid sounding like a misanthropic sociopath. I explain that I’ve been lucky enough to have had meaningful romantic relationships, despite the added layer of COVID precautions; that I welcomed my brother as a temporary roommate while his family relocated to the area last summer.

The loveliness of these experiences notwithstanding, did I need them to thrive during lockdown…? I don’t think so. What I’ve always needed, and what I’ve gained from lockdown, is a recalibrated ratio: generous helpings of solitude and small, savored servings of social interaction. Like flickers of candlelight that illuminate just enough of the world around me.

I’ve limited the white noise of ephemeral social media consumption, protective of my mental real estate against the siren song of the humming digital grid. I’ve exchanged an open office cubicle with daily video calls with colleagues and friends. It’s my hedge against both isolation and depletion: guaranteed connection with better control over its terms.

Of course, to some extent, I’ve always had control of the terms. I thought I’d sufficiently claimed ownership of it: politely but decidedly rejecting invitations when I felt overscheduled without making excuses for doing so. I thought that I was deft at turning out the lights whenever I felt like I needed calm.

But in the quiet of the lockdown, I became more aware of the internal pressure I had put on myself to attend that happy hour, schedule that brunch, to get out and do all the things. Wherever it comes from, I see clearly now the extent to which my former life stemmed from this churning engine of obligation. It runs deep enough to be unconscious, yet it operates independent of my personal preferences.

That newfound space between pressure and action is the form of distancing I hope to maintain. When I ask myself the “why” behind my choices, I want to recognize myself in the answer.

I wrote previously that going into lockdown felt like stepping off of a treadmill: dizzying. If objects in motion tend to stay in motion, the same must be true for assumptions, habits, and perceived obligations. They create deep ruts until we forget that they are a choice, one option among many paths available to us.

For better and for worse, I will soon step back onto the treadmill and into the power grid with the rest of the country. Normal life will resume. I’ll pretend to be excited about it with acquaintances to avoid weirdness. I will squeeze into a crowded metro train, blood pressure rising with the sensory storm of lurching engines and screeching friction, and I will think wistfully of days of abundant quiet.

One thing’s for sure: I plan to be much more discriminating about what I let back in. And I hope the only obligation I keep is the one to myself to turn off the lights whenever I wish, without needing permission from a pandemic.

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