Everything changes, everything stays the same
Image by David Mark from Pixabay
Social interaction while wearing a face mask is kind of like joining an online meeting without enabling your camera. Even though the eyes communicate a very large part, probably most, of our message, it just feels extremely awkward to me. There is so much information lost with the subtle facial expressions and especially the smile. I do not like it at all. That’s why I am grateful to my past self that I listened to my gut feeling some years ago. My gut told me that we had to get out of town and move to the countryside, as soon as humanly possible. Which we did. Out here everything is exactly the same pre- and post-Covid. Nothing has changed. Mother Nature does her thing regardless of what goes on in the human world. It is a blessing to be reminded of that every single day. She is my immovable, solid foundation to which my life is anchored.
The only times I am reminded about the current weird state of our world, is when I go shopping once per week. There, you see some people with face masks, hand sanitizers and the usual stuff. But a small store in the countryside is still, all things considered, pretty much the same as before. I also note the news leaflets by the store entrance. This is my only encounter with mainstream media during the week. The headlines are always something virus-related such as fear, death, or loneliness. Every. Single. Time. And the reason, I reckon, is that it sells. Fear sells. I never read the news anymore, because I cannot see any single way that it improves my life. On the contrary, every single time I read the news, I feel worse. And that’s why I stopped reading them completely, a long time ago. I rather spend my energy on things close to me in my life, things that I have at least a little bit of control over and can do something about. Like my family. But I can’t help but wonder, what this constant drumming of fear and virus will make of the minds that read the news every day, or perhaps several times per day?
When I go to town (which is rare) I am also reminded about the weird state of the world. Especially with the limits on crowd size in stores and other premises. It feels so weird. I have been living in the city for almost two decades and I never really felt at home, and nowadays certainly not so. I mentioned the gut feeling in the introduction, that we had to move. It was something that had been bugging me for a long time. We had to get out from the city. It’s a bit strange but I just knew that something was going to change, and the city life could not provide a sustainable environment for my mind. I did the shift towards “work from home” back in 2019, so almost nothing has changed work-wise after the lockdown era. The only thing that differs is that I almost never fly anymore, which is quite nice to get rid of, honestly.
Covid or not, the fundamental difference between city life and countryside life is that in the urban environment, you are constantly bombarded with mental stimuli. It never ever stops. There is always something happening. It’s as if your mind is never given a chance to rest and recover. In no way can this be compared to country life, where I can take my two dogs and go into the forest for an hour, without meeting a single person. It provides clarity. The constant stimuli of city life have a tendency to mask out my own thoughts. After some months in our new desolate location, I noted that my dreams were clearer, and I even started to have lucid dreams. Very interesting. I think these phenomena have been with me all along, but I could not access them before because of all the mental noise. And when I stopped reading the mainstream media some months ago, my mind clarity became even better.
I guess country life is not for everyone, but if you are like me, I don’t think you will ever feel at home in the city.