It’s two years to the day on Wednesday. Two years since we scrabbled to grab laptops and monitors to work from home. Two years since our adult children returned en masse to their childhood bedrooms. Two years since we made a final frantic dash to check on our elderly relatives. Two years since the launch of the most bizarre global experiment in living memory.
When asked in 1972 about the impact of the French Revolution on world politics, the Chinese statesman Zhou Enlai remarked: “It is too early to say.” We, too, will be living with the fallout of the pandemic for decades, if not centuries, to come.
Some consequences at the micro and macro level are already apparent. The advent of hybrid working is here to stay. The virtual meeting is a game-changer for anyone who spent their life circumnavigating the globe to shake hands on a deal. Already, that seems like a form of madness.
The rise in the cost of living and the geopolitical uncertainty, coupled with a huge increase in anxiety and mental health problems particularly among young people, are gruesome and immediate legacies of lockdown. The irony is lost on nobody that as restrictions lift, levels of Covid-19 in the general population in Scotland are much higher than they were when Nicola Sturgeon was giving her bleak daily press conferences with her grim roll call of the dead.
Vaccines have been a game-changer, but we are now expected to largely ignore a scenario that only 18 months ago had us all cowering in our homes, forbidden from even sitting on a park bench, let alone hugging a loved one. It’s little wonder that the cynics and the conspiracy theorists have had such free rein.
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The predictions of a new jazz age seem far-fetched. There is little sign of the kind of boom in creativity that after previous periods of global upheaval gave us fauvism, dadaism or surrealism. The prophecies of a baby boom are wide of the mark. Last week the National Records of Scotland released the figures for the fourth quarter of last year. Birth rates are falling, and death rates are rising. We may have survived the pandemic, but we appear to be slowly dying out.
There were 12,284 births registered in Scotland between October 1 and December 31 last year, a fall of 3.6 per cent on the quarter-four average for the five years to 2019. Deaths were 17.1 per cent higher over the same period, at 17,297. The figure that is perhaps most surprising is the number of Scots tying the knot. A total of 6,793 marriages were recorded in the final quarter of last year: 12 per cent higher than average over the five years to 2019.
In part, the ban on gatherings, with some weddings postponed several times during lockdowns, explains the boom. But there appears to have been a more profound societal shift. In a time of uncertainty and peril, love has triumphed as it is wont to do.
As our existences have been pared back, our freedoms restricted and our horizons narrowed, we’ve discovered the joy in the margins of our lives, a renewed connection within families and a closeness to the ones we love. Covid has killed so much, and not just those taken from us too early. It has robbed us of two years. Most of us look as if we have aged ten years. It has affected our health, damaged our businesses, crippled the economy, robbed us of our joie de vivre. It has kept us tossing and turning in the small hours, stunted our social skills, ramped up our anxiety and at times crushed hope itself.
We’ve run the gamut of emotions from A to A — too anxious and angry for nuance, subtlety or the lightness of touch of our previous carefree existence. But the pandemic has given us one amazing gift: a renewed closeness to those we care for and whose DNA we share. Without our adult children cooking, baking, filling the house with music, chatter, games and laughter, lockdown would have been a grimmer affair.
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Our friendships have meant more to us than ever before. We no longer take the people in our lives for granted. Every catch-up over coffee is a treat to be savoured.
Weddings, too, have been pared back to their essential parts. The over-the-top extravaganzas, often still being paid off as the first cracks appear in the relationship, are no longer fashionable. Princess Beatrice led the way with a simpler style of wedding during lockdown and others followed.
The cumulative loss and sorrow of the past two years have thrown the need for commitment, certainty and constancy into sharp relief, and Scots are flocking to the aisles to give their relationships the stability and permanency we have all craved during these uncertain times.
Who knows whether this trend will last, or if it will be a mere post-pandemic blip as we rush back to hectic, stressed, busy lives? But the signs so far are good. This new trend for quieter, less showy, more thoughtful nuptials bodes well for the children of the future.
The inevitable difficulties life throws all of us from time to time are faced more easily from within a stable partnership built on strong foundations.
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There is nothing good about the pandemic. It has brought so much loss and suffering. But as we face the second anniversary of lockdown, it has enabled us to press the reset button and to consider the things which really matter to us. It has led us to understand the truism that what will remain of us is love.
