At this time last year, the world was bracing for what had suddenly been deemed a pandemic, and we all thought we would only have to push through and hold our breath (literally) for a few weeks, maybe a couple of months … tops.
But that’s not what happened. What started out as an almost gleeful reprieve from the morning trek to work or school, more sleep in those early weeks before the anxiety kicked in, and more time to bake bread – more than anyone could ever imagine – soon became a series of unending lockdowns. We were suddenly having to experience ongoing physical distancing from our friends and family, an unfortunate requirement that has remained in place with only brief periods of guarded interaction.
As I reflect on this year and how it has changed all of us, whether we wanted to undergo any self-growth or not, I realize that what I was sensing some years ago took off at a pace we could have never imagined. I could feel it accelerating in 2014 when Kieran Dongahy and I made the short film about being deliberate in our viewing of images. Little did I know that at that point in time, things were just beginning to really accelerate.
In 2017, they seemed to take off at an unprecedented rate with international travel becoming so affordable that by 2019, just months before the pandemic, one colleague of mine came to San Francisco for work three times in one month … from London. Flying was becoming like taking the bus. Did we know what we were doing? Were we thinking at all before acting? Did we even know what we were experiencing when we got there, or did it all just blur together?
And then it all stopped, just like that. I was at the train station in Brighton, England, getting ready to board the train to the airport to speak at a conference in Spain when my daughter called from home. It was March 6th. “Mom,” she said, “I don’t think you should go. They’re calling this a pandemic. Countries are going to start closing their borders soon.” “No, honey,” I said, “Don’t worry. Of course they’re not. It will be fine.” But she insisted, so much so, that I suddenly thought, “Am I missing something?” It was only two hours before my flight and I thought for sure I wouldn’t be able to cancel my low-cost fare.
But there I was, at the café in the train station logging in on my laptop to cancel, and the airline immediately gave me a voucher. “That’s weird,” I thought. “Why did they do that? The conference hasn’t said a thing about canceling. What does my daughter know that I don’t?” She knew somehow that things were about to change – dramatically. Maybe it was her artistic sensibility or the fact that she was always very logical in her thinking. So I trudged back to our Brighton flat only to find the Spanish border closing that Tuesday … four days later. She was right. I would have been stuck.
This slowing down that we talk about in A Visual Manifesto for Language Teaching is exactly what we have all been forced to do this year, whether we have wanted to or not. And what has that meant? Some of us are reconsidering our jobs, our homes, our relationships, our friendships … even our definition of self. So it’s time now, before we get back into the grind and forget that we had this year, this year to call a time out, time to reevaluate who we are in the world and how we as a species have impacted this incredibly resilient place called Earth.
With a year without hugs, without regular physical contact, without meals together or even a smile from a stranger since we can no longer see people’s mouths, what have we become? Will we know how to jump back in and be completely normal again? I mean, what is normal? Maybe the best way forward is to think about what our film stated before we could even imagine a pandemic:
“We have to slow down, stop, reflect, think about what we’re seeing, why it’s there, how it affects us, what it does to us emotionally, and why. When we are able to do this, we see beneath the surface to what is really there and only then do we become the real message makers, the critical thinkers and the true problem solvers who manifest the dreams of tomorrow.”
Bring on the dreams of tomorrow. We’re all ready.
