Love in the Time of Corona

These are unusual times indeed.

A global pandemic has reached the shores of the UK, traveling through every echelon of society, from pleb to prince. Its spread has put paid to mathematical predictions, after all, modelling is exactly that - a best guess given the circumstances. What Nobel Prize winner would be able to interpolate the perversities of human nature like the compulsion to hoard when there is enough for all or the the need to mingle despite the significant health risk?

So here we are, reacting to a situation familiar in history but novel in our lifetime. This has happened before as dusty schoolbooks could tell us. Plague, flu, smallpox: somehow miniscule organisms have always had the ability to decimate a population but our ever increasing medical arsenal of drugs and machines have made us feel if not invincible, at least secure. Coronavirus, the common cold in certain forms, has reoriented our perspective, reminding us of a number of things including that we, as ever, are vulnerable.

A reminder of death is not necessarily a bad thing unless you or a loved one are sick. A brush with mortality has a crucible-like effect, burning away the superfluous to leave the most enduring parts of the spirit. That, in most cases, is love. The world boils away to just your connection to those you hold dearest. The daily grind and petty grievances evaporate in the immediacy of now and life shrinks down to a few bodily functions - the beat of a heart and the breaths taken from a hospital bed.

Breath.

What an undervalued sensation it is. The simple act of drawing air into one’s lungs, in and out, in and out, in a rhythmic cycle since those first gasps dispelling the amniotic fluid, if lucky, we hardly notice the process until it ceases altogether. But for those of us who have struggled for breath or seen someone struggling, normal breathing is the stuff of miracles. If you have the good fortune to be free from any lung condition right now, take a deep breath and marvel. Air is a tonic; drink deeply and freely.

Maybe it is a bit much to ask those who have been isolated for weeks at a time to take pleasure in such rudimentary activities as breathing but bear with me. There is something to be said for this simplification of the daily routine. How long have we now decried the frenetic pace of modern living? Now when life is stripped down to Boris’s “essentials” (ahem, eating, banking and building it seems), our threshold for enjoyment resets. Before corona, many of us looked to the latest immersive experience to make the heart thrill. Now there is pleasure to be had in even the smallest walk to the shops. What a treat to be out in the sunshine (and what sunshine it has been!) enjoying the budding leaves and the sweet, thirst-slaking air.

And what of those in the most restricted form of living, self-isolation? Even if we cannot go outside for walks, hopefully we have access to a window and can see that “little tent of blue” canopying our view. As the sun sets a return to the window will reveal a theatre of colours - hot pink, neon yellow and cyan, sunset shades that printer ink could never hope to recreate.

Within the space of two weeks these simple things have come to mean so much to me as corona has upturned my pre-existing life. As I walk towards the hospital each morning the dread of the upcoming shift is transduced by these small pleasures into something more productive, more heightened. I feel love. I think of my family, I see an unblemished blue sky and I breathe. That is enough.

I breathe.

I breathe.

I breathe.