I’m on Mission Quarantine. Like all my fellow Earthlings, I was recruited by the government to protect myself and others through self-isolation within my home. But on day eleven, this home is starting to feel more like the tiny confines of a spaceship. Hang in there with this metaphor.
Being trapped in our homes with no physical contact to the outside world (except for through technology) is essentially the same experience as astronauts aboard a space mission. When the government decided to close down businesses and mandate isolation, they essentially launched the entire U.S. on “Mission Quarantine”. Now, we’re orbiting this pandemic the way a spaceship orbits Earth, with our only hope being an “all clear” from NASA (the government) to head back down to the world we knew. But will it still be the same world, and will we still be the same people, when we return?
Aboard Mission Quarantine, things are changing. Not only in our lives, but in the institutions we left behind. For what is likely the first time, many of us are tasked with navigating life in a small space with limited social interaction. For those who normally attend school or work in public places, this can be extremely challenging. We are forced to make do with the people we can interact with — our families, who despite their best intentions, aren’t usually a go-to choice for 24-7 face time. What might have seemed like a cute hibernation season with loved ones has quickly escalated into a war zone, where even accidental disruption of your mom’s at-home workday can result in a verbal blood bath. Not to mention dad, who, in my case, lives, breathes and eats the collapsing stock market. In his off-hours, he can be seen growling and stomping around the house like a predator who’s been deprived of a kill. This might sound similar to your family, but if not, praise their remaining sanity — it’s all we have left in these dark times.
Unfortunately, isolation isn’t the only part of this mission that’s caused major changes in our lives. Without the option to go to the gym or dine out, we are forced to ration food and schedule times for at-home exercise. In order to maintain our health, it’s important to stay on top of our diets and activity levels, but this is hard when all the normal means of fulfilling those needs have gone away. It’s an astronaut’s ability to adapt that shows his or her’s true strength. Similarly, our ability to press on through Mission Quarantine will reflect our own strength of character. If we remain calm, stick to the routines, and stay socially distant, we will be doing what is best for the crew (our families), as well as all the people back on Earth.
In the end, we don’t know what the world will be like when we emerge. After getting off the spaceship, re-entering daily life, and frequenting old establishments, we might come to contemplate the self-constructed significance of the mundane tasks and pointless fears that once filled our lives, leading us to develop a greater conscious for the world’s larger problems — the ones we might not experience, but that need our help.
If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it’s that we truly aren’t alone in this world. From the United States to France to China — we have all shared the common experience of overcoming a viral disaster. The empathy and understanding we’ve built from this mission are powerful, so please, let’s not waste it.