It is eminently predictable, that memories of the fearful and disheartening advent and widespread progression of the potentially lethal, Covid-19 Pandemic will be enduring if not, indeed, lifelong. The dark, unsettling days of governmental proscribed social interaction and prophylactic quarantine effected impactful, and at times, traumatic reaction across the entire landscape of the American human persona.
Kudos and unlimited gratitude are universally due to the capable scientists at our Nation’s pharmaceutical companies for the unprecedentedly rapid development of safe and effective vaccines, presently in wide administration; pointing to a bright light at the end of this dark viral tunnel and promising a bright breaking dawn, following a long dark night of existential terror and tragic loss.
We would at this juncture, pose the presenting [sociological-psychological] question as to how much, or to what extent, if at all, we have changed after so many consecutive months of unnatural prophylactic avoidance of others and major upheaval of our individual lifestyle. Included in this novel phenomenon are curtailment of regular employment and overall changes in long-established routines. The salient issue at hand is whether the adult that emerges from this experience will be the same as he was prior to its advent. If our self-image and defining persona are, in large part, developed from, and reactive to, our empirical association with other members of society, has our nuanced individuality altered at all, or perhaps confusingly blurred from this relatively isolated experience? For one thing, has the requirement of isolation from non-familial members of society, resulted, for better or worse, in increased introspection and self-examination?
As appears to our [unprofessional] view, one’s empirical reaction to altered or new experience would appear to vary with his previously established personality. Our expectation would be that individuals whose sensitivities are not ordinarily directed to introspection or ruminative, self -examination, may, conceivably, react with less anxiety than others, more inclined to situational and personal analysis.
If our speculation is generally sound, such a persona may more easily, perhaps, even happily, adjust to the alteration of responsibility, viz. the freedom of obligatory employment, and perhaps other societal responsibilities. In accordance with such contemplation, others, by contrast, possessing an ever-present, natural inclination to self-analysis and aspiration for an acceptably nuanced self-image and societal identification, have, conceivably, found the life changes more disorienting and alteration less acceptable and more productive of anxiety, or even, to a degree, disorientation. So many people seem, naturally, to define themselves, in large part, by their profession or area of employment, that it may be acceptable to presume various degrees of, at least, partial disorientation in the suspension of one’s personally perceived societal role as well as his identification.
With the nightmare of the pandemic happily dawning on the nature and quality of the individual’s resumption of the former normality, societal and personal will be fascinating and instructive.
-p.
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