It's the question on many lips right now! And no one really knows the answer. How do we come to terms with that? And how do we live our lives in the meantime?
Soon after I went self-employed, I attended a marketing conference. At one of the workshops, the facilitator asked us to write a list of our long-held ambitions. Then draw a horizontal line on a piece of paper. We then had to mark one end of the line "my birth". Add a couple of significant life events or turning points at appropriate places. Then write "now" in what we thought was the relevant place. (I have no idea, by the way, what this had to do with marketing).
Regardless of age, gender, weight and other lifespan indicators, most people thought they were around 45-55% through their lives. The workshop made the point that, subconsciously, we have some random idea in mind of how much longer we're going to live. And that most of us believe we still have plenty of time to accomplish the things we haven't yet done. I could have walked out of the exhibition centre, crossed the Earls Court Road and got mown down by a car. But as it happens, I'm still here 15 years later. I don't actually know when it will all end. I only know that it will.
A couple of days ago, I was listening to a recording of two guys who'd been imprisoned in the Maze in Northern Ireland in the 70s and 80s. At the time, neither had any idea when they would be released. 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? Never? They didn't know when it would end. Or even whether it would.
On a much smaller scale, we find ourselves in that situation in lockdown. At the beginning we thought we knew when it would end. On 23rd March, (if you were an optimist) you thought it was going to be three weeks. Then it was until we flattened the curve (6-8 weeks maybe?). Now we seem to be waiting for the R number to drop. Or, if we are among the vulnerable or cautious, until there's a vaccine. We don't know when it will end. But it most likely will.
This lack of a definitive end date makes it difficult for us to plan. With our lives, we think we have ages. So we fail to get on and do the things we want to do before we die. For the prisoners, it was hard to plan for a future they didn't know would exist. And for those of us living in lockdown, it's impossible to plan for the much-talked-about post-pandemic normal. Because we don't know what it will look like (or - more importantly - when the pubs will be open again).
The guys who'd been in the Maze talked about going through a process before they could decide how to spend their time in prison. First they had to come to terms with their loss of freedom. This was characterised by feelings of shock, disbelief and denial. They had to adjust to isolation and confinement. Along the way, they experienced high levels of uncertainty and sometimes depression. Eventually they came to a point where they were reconciled to their situation. And could let go of the old and settle into a new way of life. Only after this could they start to make positive inroads into the life they had ahead - whatever that turned out to be.
I can relate to that - although I'm not going through these stages quite as chronologically as that. Partly, I think, because both the end date and our conditions of confinement keep changing. Some days, I seem quite happy with my lot - running, writing a blog, doing a bit of online learning and sitting with my book and a glass of wine until it's bedtime again. Other days I feel furious that I can't go where I want when I want to meet who I want. I've had a couple of "what's the point?" days this week. I've collapsed resentfully onto the sofa and watched episodes of Silent Witness that I've seen before (but, luckily, can't remember the ending). If I follow the prisoners' path, I will eventually reach a state one of them called "recovery" where I will feel as if I'm creating something positive for the life I have ahead - whatever that turns out to be.
Lockdown isn't fun. But one of the more positive things about it is the opportunity to change things. Right now, we have no choice but to try new things, work in different ways, change the quality of our existing relationships and perhaps create new ones. In the end, having time and space to think became a positive for both the prisoners. I won't be doing an OU degree like they did, but I will create something new out of this experience. I just don't know what!