The Great Pause of 2020

Pandemics strike about once every 100 years, just beyond the memory of most people. The last happened in 1918, and I know of only one person who remembered it. She was around 2 years old at the time. However, most of the media focus is on the economic fallout and the death numbers. While important, they overshadow the benefit, yes benefit, the Great Pause of 2020 offers us. Before I get into it: I sympathize with all those who have lost jobs, lost family, lost friends, and otherwise struggle. But no event is purely evil. There’s always lessons to learn, perspectives to gain. It’s rare for society to have a moment like this, a moment to pause. While many people are still working, the essential workers that keep us healthy and fed and with electricity, most people have paused in the developed world.

Stay-at-home orders have provided people with time they hadn’t ever had. Now, many people are suffering from financial problems, and that is throwing anxiety on top of the pandemic. However, the financial problems and the time offers a perspective: namely, we don’t need like we think. Much of the financial difficulties sit with the fact we expect too much, want too much, and spend too much. We lack perspective on what is truly important (hint: it’s not economic!). The Great Pause of 2020 is a forced meditation, if you will, on how the pursuit of the American Dream (writing as an American) is a shallow endeavor. Like when I sit in zazen, I’m forced to face the simplicity of reality and the ugliness of my own misplaced desires. The Great Pause is a societal zazen. Our culture is based on consumption instead of saving. On endless work instead of contentment. On speed instead of slowness. On entertainment instead of reflection. On noise instead of silence.

I’ve seen people on social media “lose their minds” because they are being forced to stop and truly look in the mirror at themselves. And I get it. When I first started meditating about 10 years ago, it was scary, uncomfortable, and terrible. It sucks to see what you once held dear as shallow and flat-out wrong. It sucks to face your selfishness and your faults. And it still sucks for me to face them everyday. The Great Pause is now forcing people and culture to do the same. And many are turning toward alcohol and entertainment to medicate the pain they feel, to push away the emptiness within. At the hospital my brother works, they’ve seen far more alcohol-caused ER visits than cases of the virus. Instead of facing their ugliness and making changes (even small ones like taking up a hobby), many are drinking or anesthetizing themselves with entertainment and pornography and drugs.

It’s terrible of me to admit it, but I’ve been enjoying the Great Pause. This is not to belittle the deaths and suffering people are experiencing. In my little segment of the world–and all of us can only deal with our little segments–everything is good. Very good. I’ve been writing and drawing and working on other projects. I’ve gotten more done in the last several weeks that I would have in several months. As an extreme introvert (read: hermit), the solitude is energizing me beyond anything I’ve experienced before. As selfish as it is for me to admit, I am happy and want the stay-at-home orders to last well into summer (and in my dreams well into next year!). But I’ve also done my mirror-staring time before this happened. I’ve learned I don’t need many possessions to be content. I don’t need socialness to be content. I’ve accepted my inner ugliness and selfishness even as I attempt to correct them. The Great Pause has allowed me to experience days where I choose what I want to do and when. Of course, I am also single and don’t have kids, but for those with families, the Great Pause should allow you to refocus on what matters to you too. After all, why else have a family?

And that’s what this rare event allows: refocus. It cuts away all the falseness and routine and rat-race if we allow it. Or we can fall deeper into the media messages, the entertainment, the despair, the anxiety, the shallowness that culture often encourages. As we emerge from this Great Pause (not too soon, I selfishly hope!), many will seek to smooth over their discomfort the event caused. Businesses, desperate to once again chase the false god Profit, will blitz us with messages designed to pull us away from reality and back to the dream world of consumption and debt.

But right now, you can choose. You can choose to use the Great Pause to reorder your life: to reorder your financial habits, to reorder your mind, to learn how to be truly content, to pursue arts and hobbies. Then, after the Reemergence that will follow the Great Pause, you can keep with the habits you established and limit your exposure to the messages to return to the old way.

Now, I try to avoid writing pieces such as this. JP is an anime blog, after all. But the Great Pause is a once-in-100-year event that has offered an opportunity to get in touch with ourselves and our families. I understand it isn’t easy to face your own ugliness: your depression and your thoughts. But as I had learned through meditating, your thoughts are your thoughts. They can’t do anything if you don’t allow them to control you. You always (and I don’t use that word lightly) have the choice to do the opposite. Listening and sitting with them isn’t the same as acting on them. The Great Pause has revealed American culture’s goodness as people reach out to help each other, but it also has revealed its selfishness, its meaningless consumption, as people hoard toilet paper and other things. It has revealed how consumption lies about the good life. The American Dream, built on debt, is a nightmare of anxiety, depression, and discontent. As soon as you stop running, stop spending, it all collapses. Instead, a life of discipline, of saving over spending, of learning to be satisfied with what you have, of looking within and toward God, and of having passions like writing leads to happiness and contentment. Consumption will not do any of this. The Great Pause of 2020 offers a chance to hit the play button on the truly important things in your life.

I hope you stay well on all levels of your life.