“It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning”
– Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway.
Human beings nowadays seem determined to make meaning out of their lives. We’ve all heard the cliché “everything happens for a reason,” haven’t we? We’ve all cracked open a fortune cookie from our favorite Chinese restaurant and chuckled reading the little blurbs on the white strips of paper: “all will come to you in time,” “a pleasant surprise is waiting for you,” “you will be given a new and exciting project.” They may not be real or indicate anything truly authentic about one’s life but we read meaning into them all the same: “I’ll meet the partner of my dreams soon,” “I might ace the test I thought I failed,” “maybe I’ll get the promotion at work.”
The same mindset is applied to the start of a new year. We think of resolutions to start our new year, believing the difference between December 31st and January 1st is an entire lifetime. It’s a chance to start “fresh” with a new attitude and goals. Suddenly a new year has new meaning that the previous year lacked.
COVID-19’s self-isolation has become another fortune cookie, another new year. There is meaning to be had… some kind of purpose to be made.
Pamela Savino for ThriveGlobal.com published a column towards the beginning of the mandatory stay-at-home order titled “5 Ways Quarantine Can Unlock Your Life Purpose.” In the column, she suggests that every human has the potential to uncover their unique talents and “gifts” if they use the time in isolation to discover them and then share them with the world once they’re able. She, the author of Live Authentically, suggests that right now, people are like coal under pressure. And when coal is put under enough pressure, it becomes a diamond. “You’re a diamond in the making,” she says.
No, Pamela. Maybe I am simply trash.
Savino falls into a laundry list of individuals attempting to create a meaningful purpose for our current situation. Why? Why is it that everything must have a purpose? Why is it that every experience in life must equate to a higher meaning? It must be possible that the events of the everyday experience may not mean anything on a deep level.
Maybe it has something to do with the world we live in. It’s a fact of the 21st century that the majority of the developed, Westernized world lives their lives on the internet. It’s a weird way to reaffirm their sense of reality, I think. By showing a life through online posts and pictures and receiving feedback for it (likes, comments, etc.), the life is therefore real and meaningful.
The vast majority of those who had already lived their lives through the internet are still doing that. But the lives they post on are shockingly different now, in May 2020, than they were in January 2020. Instagram posts have moved from pictures of world travel and hashtags about “wanderlust” to images of dogs taking over makeshift home offices with the hashtag #QuarantineLife. There is still an influx of pictures of food, but rather than fancy, filtered dinners from popular restaurants, the images are now of pantry-salvaged homemade meals. The change has created a second life in itself, marking the existence of someone going through self-isolation and social distancing as its own new kind of reality. Posting about it creates a sense of comradery, I suppose, but I think it comes from a place of still needing the affirming reassurance that life is being lived.
The fact is that not every meal I eat is going to be life-changing, not every outing is going to be marked down as incredible, and not every experience will be memorable—why should it be that way in quarantine? Why must I find the meaning in the experience … is it not enough to simply get through it? To live? Perhaps the meaning that can be found in quarantine is that not everything needs to signify purpose and that the meaning of life can just be living minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day.
I’m sorry, Pamela Savino. Let me recommend you a few books that might prove my point better. See: the life’s work of Virginia Woolf, specifically Mrs. Dalloway.
FIN
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