The toughest thing about lockdown

 The toughest thing about lockdown has to be not being able to just chat someone up about research or to just go for lunch or a coffee with friends and chat about research.  Somehow zoom calling someone to chat, about research or anything really, is just not as satisfying. This is bizarre, at least in theory. I was just reading through a book I am reviewing, which is highly enjoyable and before starting another chapter I just had the urge to sit down and talk about it, talking helps me to figure things out. What are its connections to my own research? What would I have wanted to know in more depth that the author has not included? And I began wondering who I could zoom or Skype to discuss it with. And somehow it just doesn't work out that way, its just not satifying. I remember in college at Oxford I would just step out to our shared kitchen and somehow there was always someone there and I would just start talking to them and it would just work out. That spontaneity of being able to just pick up a conversation with someone is missing in our the current moment. So while we are able to connect and thus in theory satisfy our metaphysical need to 'being with someone' it is also a moment lacking in randomness and spontaneity that makes it less than satisfying because the surprise element of it has been removed. The just talking to who you find and the surprise, unexpected conversations that can happened are simply not happening. 

Has it all been down in the dumps this past year? (YES A YEAR!) Well, it is true that it has been a tough year for most people in way or another. While it is true the economy has been very damaged.  It has also opened up space for personal realisations and reflections that would not have taken place without the isolation lockdown has caused. And these, I want to think, have given this year, at least at the personal, individual level, something positive. And since society is made up of these individuals the better we know each other and how to best relate to each the better society will be. I think our need for connecting with others is something all of us, even the most introvert amongst us, have missed. While this realisation might not lead everyone to remember the metaphysical origin of this need, it has taken me back to the anthropology class (philosophical anthropology) of my first university year. In it we learnt that at the core of our very being is the reality of being a 'con-ser' or as Martin Buber put it 'to be with', and ich und du, I and thou. We are at our most 'us' when we are with someone. And this isn't some romantic pitch, rather it points towards the fact that no one is an island. The social implications of this are far-reaching. It is not just that we might miss meeting a friend for coffee or that society needs us for it to function well, it's that at our deepest self we are most fulfilled and understand ourselves best in relation to others. This self-understanding is crucial to that social living at the micro and macro levels. When we understand how we behave towards others in the different facets of our lives: in anger, in joy, in sorrow, etc, we learn how we are. This leads to both an easier being with ourselves but also, more practically, it helps us improve how we are towards others. 

So while I have been in lockdown and have begun this year feeling very blah about the new year I have also learnt to keep a better balance of my day to day life between work, rest, exercise and being with family in a way that I would never have done living alone or being able to escape the house when I found it just too annoying.  What has been your 'best' of this year? What have you learnt? What is your take away?