Where did empathy go?
A discussion into how covid has affected our mental and emotional health. Who have we become and where are we heading?
When the covid breakout infiltrated our lives and the tumbling pace of lockdown began, many of us firstly mourned our social lives and wondered how we would survive a life indoors, its nuanced complications only pixelated. Our first concerns flickered to our reel of plans and marked-in events drop off. Financial worries increased, worries about how we would see our family, worries about the health of others, worries about the longevity of local businesses, fears about how long this would actually go on for- the worries and fears didn’t stop.
A year on in the UK and we have all had to become accustomed to life indoors; from bedroom to living room or kitchen. Day to day we have had to decompartmentalise the situation we find ourselves in and manipulate time differently. The small things before were so insignificant we didn’t see them, and time was ours to play with. Having a long shower wouldn’t be seen as an event in your day. Going for a walk wasn’t on our radar. Why walk when we can run and fit brunch in too? Passions and interests were side-lined because we always had to be somewhere: the age of incessant commitments. At first, we saw a flurry of Zoom calls; screens of little communities, but over time, the reality that life indoors wasn’t going anywhere set in. Less Zoom calls and a schedule of weekly online hang out’s, more time with ourselves.
How we have reacted to this differs and our feelings have fluctuated between mere hours. At times we have been grateful for the slowdown of life and the ostensible added hours in our day. We have felt at war with lockdown, wrestling with ourselves with nowhere to vent our frustrations, at peace with the afforded extra time on the couch, moaning to our friends over a zoom call at how bored we are, bettering our form in whatever exercise we practice, flickering between activities because we cannot settle our minds, crying because we just need to- the experience of being indoors has been a difficult climb for us all.
What has this perhaps done to our ability to empathise in the long term? Have we all become so consumed with ourselves and getting through this, that we have become less supportive to one another? It is ironic that there feels to be a struggle with empathy, despite the problems of the pandemic requiring empathy for our mental and emotional survival. It is a catch 22. We have all suffered and many of us are not ok. We have needed each other more than we ever have but have we really been able to be there for each other when our own resources are so depleted? Empathy can be life’s seeds to understanding. It doesn’t guarantee understanding, but it can steer a relationship to more harmonious waters. The waters we find ourselves in are cruel and perhaps as a result we have cocooned ourselves away, even hidden, and our ability to look outward has shrank as we further cocoon.
It is interesting that people saw the end of romantic relationships, the lockdown revealing more of a person that you were blinded to before. Very few people talk about the decaying of friendships as a result of lockdown. We expect relationships to break up, but do we expect the same of friendships?
We have perhaps never felt so magnified and responsible for our own mental health. We now have to manage our mental health without time spent with friends and family and the removal of anything we did outside that contributed to our wellness. Whilst some of us are living in very small confines which exacerbates the problem of feeling trapped.
Perhaps our expectations have also changed, alongside with our changed attitude and values. Do we think of friendship in the same way as we did before? We have not lost the ability to empathise, but we have perhaps our emotional peripherals are weaker. Some might argue they are stronger because we have all gone through ‘the same thing’. To an extent, but it would be neglectful to not realise that we have all had different experiences.
There will be a lot of debris left from the pandemic and it has irrevocably changed our lives in many ways. Our mental health and resolve have been tested to degrees we didn’t know were possible. Our coping mechanisms have changed. We have changed. Some constants might remain, but with so much change that has happened, can we be sure of anything anymore? Even the things we considered immovable, unshakable, hearty truth. I hope that covid hasn’t scorched our ability to have empathy towards one another, because without empathy we are far more alone than we would ever desire to be.
