Back in March when everyone was beginning to shelter-in-place, I remember someone saying that moving to stay-home mode would be easy compared to re-opening mode.
Now that we’ve begun that stage of the journey, I’m talking to friends and family who might agree.
Mood Music:
- There are the endless procedures now necessary for people to return to their shops and offices.
- There’s the long list of questions for how families safely resume gatherings.
- As summer drags on, discussion about how and when to open schools will create enough stress to fuel a thousand migraines.
I don’t want to argue about whether the lockdowns or all of the re-opening precautions are justified. The arrows directing movement in buildings will be there for some time, as will the mask wearing in public.
Instead, we all need to:
- Try to understand each others’ concerns as we head back out into the world,
- Not brush someone off as paranoid because they’re worried about exposure to their households, and
- Not take every question you get about your own precautions as a sign that the person asking doesn’t trust you.
Some will stride out into this new world more enthusiastically than others.
It’ll be easy to look at someone who wants to go through all the safety procedures before a gathering and believe they’re overthinking it.
It’ll be easy to take offense if you’re asked about your own potential exposure to COVID-19 — especially when you’re taking every safety measure known to humanity.
This is one of the more insidious things about the pandemic — it’s tendency to pit people against each other. I don’t mean the “it’s a hoax and it’s tyranny” crowd, or the “you went out in public because you don’t care about saving lives” crowd.
I mean the mistrust over how exposed someone is. About friends and family eyeing each other with suspicion over who is being careful or reckless.
It’s easy for mistrust and frustration when we don’t know for certain what all the right answers are in the first place.
As we move forward with each suggestion of a small get-together, there are a few things I hope we can all keep in mind:
- A lot of us miss each other terribly and want to be together again.
- We also have different feelings about how to come out of sheltering and having family events again.
- Everyone’s concerns should be taken seriously and not be dismissed as overthinking or not being trustworthy.
- If you’re gathering as a family for the first time in three months and one family member wants to know how it’s going to work, that’s a valid thing to ask about.
- It’s entirely appropriate to ask what everyone’s exposure has been.
- It’s entirely appropriate to let people know what your own exposure is.
It’s good to be at a point where we can start to think of doing some things together again. But make no mistake: We’ll be in this pandemic for many months to come.
We can’t stay locked away, and that means extra precautions. It’s a hard, complicated pain in the ass, so we have to keep working together, be more trusting and more patient with each other.
