Pandemic, Bell Jar and Homo Anxious

Shakespeare in his time period said that it is human tendency to err but in the modern context, there is more to the tendency of people. The homo sapiens have evolved into an advanced species that doesn’t have a name for now but let’s call them homo anxious. This species knows its way around all the technology and is very close to unraveling all the secrets of this Universe but there is one thing that they are not able to accomplish – their fear and anxiety. These humans are constantly in an anxious state because they worry about future, they fear what might happen tomorrow. For that, they prepare themselves, they plan things very accordingly in advance.

But the year 2020 gave this species of homo anxious a fear that they were not ready for – COVID-19 virus and the accompanied worldwide lockdown. All the plans of this species, all their preparations turned waste in a tiny amount of time. The stability for which people craved so dearly was nowhere to be found. The lockdown increased dramatically and all the hopes people could stick to a better tomorrow started fading away. The routine of this species, that used to be hectic and covering each second of the day in a productive manner turned into a routine of a old writer living alone in the hills. Waking up each day, having breakfast at home, reading or watching something, having a nap, eating again and sleep at night. In the beginning, it seemed as a good way out of the tiredness and rush of life but soon, people started realizing the true reality.

The whole world around them was static. It wasn’t moving and this was a static that no one wanted or no one could control even. Living in an uncontrolled static and unknown future looked like a dystopian sci-fi movie brought into reality to people. There was nothing they could do except try different dishes, play games with family or connect with friends online. It was a reality people were trying to construct despite the reality of the world outside their homes. The simplest tasks of buying grocery even became a mission which, if accomplished, was considered a big success.

In the midst of all this existing in a void like situation where once you enter, you can’t realize the passage of space and time, there was one thing that people did notice and that was their increasing dependency on technology. From concepts of ‘work from home’ to online ‘multi-player gaming’ to binging online shows, people’s hands, eyes and brain too were glued to the screens in front of them.

Here I would like to use the analogy created by Sylvia Plath for  her novel – A Bell Jar. In her book, she considered the bell jar as something that had trapped the protagonist in it and was slowly driving her to madness. In scientific community with which our modern species, homo anxious are familiar with, a bell jar is used to contain some gas or chemical and studied with curiosity and a scientific observation. But my analogy would be much closer to Plath’s because I consider the technology as the bell jar that trapped the eyes and brains of people in this pandemic and made them an object kept in a vacuum, completely away from the real world by creating a false, social world in its own. The creative minds of the writers, poets, artists, musicians, etc. were all blocked by the technology’s inventions.

Imagine now! If during the great plague of London, Newton would have played online Chess all day long. If Leonardo Da Vinci would have not worked while being confined in his home during the pandemic in his time, we wouldn’t have got some of the art we have today from him. Even in this lockdown, we don’t know how many Oscar Wildes, Keats and Austens have spent their time worrying about the Pandemic, thinking what will happen tomorrow and showing remorse over and over again of all the plans they had for their year.

To put a pause to my thoughts here, I would say that Yes, Even if Pablo Neruda said that ‘For once on the face of the  earth, let’s not speak in any language, let’s stop for one second and not move our arms so much.’, he didn’t mean to do all this permanently. Life has more to give than the bell-jar we all are struck in. I hope that the way Archimedes one day got his ‘EUREKA’ moment, we all will too and get out of this bell jar to create the master-pieces waiting for to be created.

Yours,

A homo anxious,                   

Residing in a bell jar next to yours.