AS MORE AND MORE more of us who are still working remotely receive the COVID-19 booster, and as more effective treatments are developed and omicron fades into distant memory (one can always hope), the threat of returning to “normal life”—offices, restaurants, bars—looms on the horizon. White-collar workers across the nation are looking upon their professional shoes and slacks with fear and dread. Are we as a country capable of abandoning sweatpants, after all they’ve done for us?
We have grown accustomed to a softer, smaller world, a comfortable and blanket-filled cocoon of our own making, but soon we will reenter a world that is both freer and crueler. A world where people see our faces when we walk by and (God forbid) try to start conversations with us. A world where people hug us without asking first. A world where, for some reason, we are expected to make small talk. Calvinists and non can surely agree that this is depraved.
It will be difficult to return to professional lives that involve arduous and near-mythical rituals of the before-times such as “commutes” and “dress codes” and “supervisors who know how late we sleep in.” We may not easily remember that checking in with our coworkers is more important, and better for our mental health and well-being, than checking in with our office plants. Yes, even when Janice the fern seems desperate for a water-cooler conversation. (This is assuming your coworkers are better conversationalists than Janice. Which, depending on how much social skills have deteriorated, may not be true.)
When we return to our old social habits, will we be able to function without making significant social faux pas? Will our friends love us anyway, even when we exclaim “Wow, that baby is ugly” and realize with horror that no, we weren’t on mute, because there is no Zoom mute button in real life? Or when, in the middle of a nice gathering, we grab an armful of snacks and turn on an episode of The Great British Baking Show?
Certainly, socializing with intent to be noticed and admired—going to bars and restaurants, happy hours, dates—will be even more difficult. Online, from the comfort of one’s home, one of the best ways to be noticed is via social media. If you post great pictures and make jokes as cleverly and efficiently as possible, or combine a joke with a picture to make a great meme, you’ll draw a large audience and impress the right people. But in real life, if you were to emulate a meme—say, by asking everyone you meet if they have played the critically acclaimed online video game Final Fantasy XIV—you would be unlikely to achieve the same result.
Reintegrating into society likely will be much easier for the extroverted among us, who dreamed of this moment constantly before the vaccine and since then have already embarked on their journey to Utterly Baffling Well-Adjustment. But none of us, not even the extroverts, will benefit from the increased pressure to return to “normal” levels of activity, vanity, and overwork.
And we—the socially awkward, cozily maladjusted masses—will resist. From the comfort of our own homes, watching The Great British Baking Show, and wearing our beloved sweatpants.
Beth Cooper-Chrismon was director of individual giving at Sojourners. She contains multitudes.
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