By Kate Murray ‘22
Staff Writer
This month marks one year since I, along with most members of the Mount Holyoke community, packed up my dorm and left campus due to COVID-19. Like most people, I have experienced grief, frustration, anger and instability since then. There have been countless days where I wake up with an acute, dull ache in my chest for no obvious reason until I remember, “Oh, right. Your life has been turned upside down because of a pandemic.”
I’m choosing not to dwell on the plethora of painful and heartbreaking moments of this past year, not because I think they’re unimportant, but because I feel more inspired to share the moments in which I was able to find respite and peace during this tumultuous time. That said, I will not be claiming that there was a “silver lining” to the pandemic or that I took this opportunity to “become a better person.” I would never want to minimize the devastation that this disease has caused, costing many their livelihoods and causing the deaths of more than 2.7 million worldwide. Rather, I will be reflecting on how I have been able to relish in joyous simplicities amid a moment of vast destruction and uncertainty and how I have come to prioritize doing nothing as an act of radical self-care.
The most major shift I have noticed within myself since the start of the pandemic is how my attention has been dramatically redirected. Since I was no longer able to move freely, my world was suddenly a fraction of the size it once was. I saw the same people, sat in the same rooms and walked the same path in the neighborhood every day, predictably and monotonously. I quickly realized that the only way I was going to survive life amid the pandemic was if I intentionally paid attention to different things outside of my standard routine. Since my school life, work life and social life were almost entirely online, I wasn’t super compelled to direct my extra energy to anything on a screen, especially after watching the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma” and getting totally freaked out about social media capitalizing on our attention. Instead, I began to develop a deeper curiosity about my surroundings and get more in tune with my body’s wants and needs. Rather than view my phone as a lifeline to the outside world, I began to see it more as just a rectangular black box that I had the choice, not the duty, to pick up.
Jenny Odell, author of “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy,” describes the intentional redirection of one’s attention as occupying a “third space” where one isn’t entirely removed from the “real world,” but rather has mindfully created some distance between themselves and the hustle and bustle of life. The goal is not to isolate yourself from everyone and everything outside of the third space, for you’re still facing toward the outside world at all times, ready to jump back in if you’re needed. For me, in the time of COVID-19, “hustle and bustle” usually meant thinking anxious thoughts and obsessively refreshing my news feed. I began entering my third space by going for slow and mindful walks and paying attention to the trees and birds that I used to pass without a second thought. I really resonate with Odell’s description of the third space as “an almost magical exit to another frame of reference,” because in these moments, I was truly immersed in my surroundings. I was able to recognize myself as merely a small piece in a complex ecosystem being observed by other creatures as I observe them. Sometimes I occupied a third space outside of nature, finding solace in baking from scratch, playing around with watercolors or meditating. I cultivated spaces where I was guaranteed to find joy, an emotion that seemed to be lacking the world over.
Self-care began to take on a new meaning for me, one that wasn’t cliche and didn't require investing in fancy bubble bath products. I started thinking of self-care the way Audre Lorde did when she wrote, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” As a student involved in political activism and social justice education, this description hit home. I realized that radical self-care aligned with all of my core values, and paying attention to these intersections helped me resist the production-oriented, attention-sucking system that dominates the Western world. I was able to restructure my priorities, reevaluating what was most important to me and putting it into practice. There has never been a time when I thought answering a work email was more important than being there for a friend, but this intentional shift in my thinking made me realize how often I had put off a meaningful conversation to respond to one last message online.
I want to acknowledge that this type of experience is a privilege, and one I was able to access because of my unique positionality. I am not an essential worker, nor am I caring for a loved one who is ill or responsible for monitoring the schooling of a small child. I am lucky enough that I had the flexibility and resources available to access the third space, and I recognize that so many of us, literally and figuratively, cannot afford to do the same.
I find refuge in the words of Hannah Arendt, author and political scientist, when she writes in “The Human Condition” that these temporary escapes to the third space “amount to seeking shelter from action’s calamities in an activity where one man, isolated from all others, remains master of his doings from beginning to end.” There is so much that is out of our control, but it comforts me to know that I can always treat myself and other living things with care and give them the attention they deserve.