I talked to my aunt last night who is 75-years old, and she remarked that her pandemic life is not too terribly different from life before. She is retired and need not leave the house for work; she does not have any young children at home all the time because the schools are closed, and she does not have all her activities cancelled. The worst she has to deal with is her favorite restaurants closed with no ability to take any sort of vacation. It is the same with my father: his life is not so different than before. They are old.
On the other hand, there are millions of Americans, especially younger Americans, who have seen their lives turned upside down. My daughters, for example, have seen all their organized sports and school come almost to a screeching halt. Their friend’s parents won’t let them out of the house, so my daughters almost never see their friends. Other Americans have lost their livelihoods. If you want to see real pain and desperation, look at the family of six barely making any money while all living cooped up together everyday with nowhere to go in a one bedroom apartment. Yikes! The rates of domestic violence, drug abuse, mental illness are off the charts. So much is happening behind closed doors in households outsiders will never know about. That young lady who had 18-months of sobriety from opioids before the pandemic hit? Well, she is not sober anymore. She might not even be alive. And of course some 450,000 Americans, most of them elderly and/or suffering from “comorbidities,” have died after being infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes COVID-19. Many more will die before it’s over.
The situation today in some ways is similar to the culture of trauma and death in 1919. WWI and calls to fight the “war to end all words” so as to “make the world safe for democracy” had just ended with huge expense and sacrifice, as well as the Spanish Influenza pandemic which killed some 50 million persons worldwide. Suffering and death on a grand scale. Woodrow Wilson, WWI, the problem of Germany, unrestricted submarine warfare, the League of Nations, progressive Democratic reform, and oversold idealism in general during the previous decade — by 1920, Americans were done with all that. After such an exhausting period, people just wanted to have fun. The Republicans stormed back into back power, deposing Wilson and the Democrats on a “return to normalcy” platform. The election of 1920 was a reaction against internationalism in general, Wilson in particular, and the interminable headaches and complexity of the modern world. Sometimes the people want the government to take an active role in society, and other times they want the government out of their lives. The “roaring” 1920s was the latter case.
Fun. Frivolous. Scandalous. Light-hearted. It was almost a total refutation of everything the high-minded Woodrow Wilson wanted, at least in the short-term. What did much of the world look like in 1919 — well this —
I always thought that you needed to understand the 1920s in reaction to what went before. Looked at in that light, the culture of that decade — the era of jazz music and the Charleston dance craze, of flappers and “speakeasies,” of Jay Gatsby and Charlie Chaplin — makes sense. It makes perfect sense.
I saw a video today which tried to use the lesson of history to apply to the present. If what came before in terms of WWI and the Spanish Flu epidemic helps to explain the 1920s, what will happen with the exit of Donald Trump from the presidency and the waning and eventual end of the Coronavirus epidemic? I don’t know. But if history is a guide, we have some clues —
It is clear there will be much pent-up psychic energy ready to be expended when the current pandemic eases and then ends. Will there be a giant orgy of spending and drinking — good-old-fashioned cavorting and fornicating — as the above video suggests? The total opposite of the cautious “social distancing” urged so much nowadays? Will the Id have its day?
I suspect so.
My daughters are only 10 and 13-years old, but they will also be hugely relieved when the pandemic eases and society re-opens. They will be able to return to school, see their friends, and play soccer again. And if my daughters are doing better then I will do better.
But I am a bit like my aunt in being older and set in my ways. After this quarantine as before, I have little desire to go to a dance club and drink myself insensible. I did not attend live music or sporting events before and won’t afterwards. I am not in college or trying to find my footing in the job market. I am not single. I will be 54-years old in four months. Compared to a person who is just figuring out who they are and where they fit in the economy and the wider world, I have so many fewer needs. I am who I am. I have my career. And most importantly: any happiness I might find comes much more from within me and much less from external sources like a big party or a music festival, a possible job or potential date, or a vacation to Hawaii or Aspen. That is the consolation of age. I am much more resilient than I was earlier in life. Inside a pandemic or outside, my baseline is more stable. My hopes and dreams might be many fewer, but so are my needs and anxieties. Equanimity. To be just happy to see the next day.
Is this equanimity the result of decades of earned life experience? Or is it just vastly lower levels of testosterone? Is it wisdom? Or declining hormones? Some mix of both?
I don’t know.
But what I do know is this: to anyone idealizing the goal of going to large gatherings in late 2021 and partying like F. Scott Fitzgerald did in 1921, you might want to do a little research on the wildly tragic story of his and Zelda’s unraveling over the next two decades. Talk about using history as a learning guide! Re: “acute alcoholism” and “severe mental illness.” Maybe the party lifestyle is not all it’s cracked up to be? Only a fool learns from his own mistakes, as Otto von Bismark explained. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others.
For me, there is one salient fact that overrides all the others: in May, when I turn 54, I will have only seven more years until I retire with a full pension. Seven years: that is the number. In person or with distance learning, I will have one more year of service under my belt this June towards retirement. The clock is ticking, and I am watching it.
In fact, I am watching that much more closely than I am watching so much happening in the rest of the world. Seven years and then I am out. Got me a calendar. Marking off the dates. Seven years and my youngest daughter will graduate from high school.
Seven years.
Good luck to everyone for the rest of 2021 — especially to that young lady who had 18-months sober but relapsed on heroin.
She will need it.
And invest in popular nightclubs and condom companies. History suggests they will be in high demand. That 2022 will be a giant party.
But we shall see.
“Why 2021 Is Going To Be Epic”
A new president, a vaccine, a boom, and you’ve got yourself a party.
By Andrew Sullivan
