Does a pandemic end with a bang or with a whimper?
Okay, were just in Step 2 of our BC pandemic experience, which is a soft re-opening, with gatherings capped at 50 and house guests limited to 5, (or one other household,) and interprovincial travel still on an essential basis only. But its easy to feel as if were moving into post-pandemic life. As the Globe and Mail reported on the weekend:  Premier John Horgan announced British Columbias latest step toward emerging from pandemic restrictions on Monday morning. Within 45 minutes, the BC Ferries online booking system crashed, as B.C. residents responded enthusiastically to the end of regional travel limits. The travel restrictions were just one of the measures eased this week. Movie theatres reopened for the first time since November. Alcohol can now be served in bars and restaurants until midnight. Playhouses and banquet halls reopened for gatherings of up to 50 people. Playdates are a thing again. A postpandemic society is now appearing on the horizon. Well youre not alone! A recent Ipsos poll found that 51% of Canadians feel nervous about returning to normal. Its okay to have a reaction to the easing of restrictions. Im glad to have this normalized. While Im relieved, personally, to be able to ease up and move around more freely, let my kid play with friends or sign up for summer camps, or think about a summer camping trip, Im not as enthusiastic when I think about everyone else being able to do that. Partly, this is because a big part of my pandemic experience was to treat it like a very long and harder-than-I-bargained for meditation retreat. I practiced meditation and took online courses and thought a lot more about invisible things like ancestors and mycelial networks and systems and the imaginal world and it was  something and Im still integrating it all. and I dont know how to talk about it yet . and its made me slower and thoughtful and more inept at small talk  and  I feel as though all the people who experienced this essentially as a prison sentence, a restriction of their liberties, and are full of energy and pent-up vibes ready to surge out into the world and dine and drink and travel and book ferries and gather and camp and party their faces off are coming into these shared (understaffed, underresourced, deeply in demand) spaces with a really contradictory energy to mine. Im kind of scared of that. Like, maybe I need a t-shirt that says, still processing. Give me space. And please dont litter or be rude and demanding to serving staff or Ill completely lose my shit.  Peak Resilience continued:  We have been in survival mode for the past 18 months and our nervous systems have been working on overdrive. Its important to take. it. slow. Listen to your gut. If you dont feel comfortable seeing people indoors, or going out to restaurants  dont push it. You get to do this on your own time! Ill be honest. Im sick of being asked to be kind, to dig into my kindness reservoir, which is kind of tapped out. And so, I dont want to land back on this square, all the way at the bottom of the snakes and ladders board, after all that has happened since the pandemic was declared: be kind to others, and be kind to yourself, as we emerge from one set of uncertainties to a new set. But ultimately, thats probably what is called for. The one bonus is that I did attend enough meditation classes to learn something about what that actually looks and feels like. It looks like taking a deep breath. Or two. And then adjusting again, squirming around a little bit and finding my footing, until Im comfortable in my body. It means noticing feelings or sensations, and naming them. That weirdly disarms their itchiness. It means acknowledging them, with a kind of courtesy. I guess youre still on high alert, and little things are going to activate you. As my friend Lisa says, good job noticing.  It means remembering that gratitude is a superpower and that, if youre really stoked to be getting a latte at your favourite cafe for the first time in a while, you can say that, to the person who has quite possibly been working the line for over a year. Thank you. Peak Resilience recommends this Anxiety Canada article that outlines 12 tips for reengaging with a post-pandemic world. Which is professionally endorsed and might be helpful. One thing the article doesnt mention something that my friend Kera and I have talked about, as one possible positive outcome from pandemic life: that we might become better at navigating consent, as an every day thing. We can normalize checking in with people about their comfort level, with intimacy. That doesnt have to be restricted to sexual intimacy. My kid is super excited to have a play at your place. Or if youre in a huge hurry, why dont you go ahead of me, and I can get the space I need behind you. Maybe this is just in my rich fantasy life, my well-developed pandemic-created inner world, that I am capable of having these conversations with the people around me. Maybe in real life, I will revert to being the old silent-but-steaming person I always was then again, maybe I did gain something from this strange year. Its all new, a strange new world. Were all emerging with some scar tissue  most of which is invisible. Tenderness is okay. Tenderness might even be just what we need  to feel, to notice, to extend to each other, to ourselves.