Down the Rabbit Hole: During a pandemic
By Chegs Chisholm
It’s not hard to go down the rabbit hole when you’re in lockdown. In fact, it’s the easiest thing to do. We have time and we unlimited data.
Yesterday I used that time and data and fell into a Twilight movie marathon-sized rabbit hole.
For four hours I left my mortal-adult self and took on the guise of a Robert-Pattison-obsessed, drooling teenager. I savoured the lusty youth, sturdy good looks and quizzical (almost comical) desperate love of the protagonists. For a moment, I forgot I was supposed to be a parent/teacher/partner/support/business owner-saver/normal human in this unprecedented moment in time called lockdown.
In this new weird world we’re in, the world that vampire Robbo inhabited suddenly didn’t seem so fictional. It feels like anything is possible right now. Perhaps my kid actually is a vampire-wolf? That would explain a lot.
In fact, it feels like a bunch of things could happen. Perhaps we could, as Matthias Horx posited in his recent essay, The Post Corona World, live in a world where “wealth suddenly no longer plays the decisive role. Good neighbours and a blossoming vegetable garden are more important."
Imagine that. Just for a second. Wouldn’t that be delicious.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m into this commerce thing – I love a good shop as much as the next person. I have a wardrobe full of things I don’t specifically need. Walking into a beautifully curated home store brings me such deep aesthetic pleasure that often I will seriously contemplate not paying the mortgage or feeding the children in order to indulge in one or more of those pieces – although I never do. Shopping and me, we’re like Rob and Kristen were during the Twilight series, inseparable.
Though the heat does go out of my passion for commerce when I look at my bank balance. The Jones’s are an influential lot and chasing every dollar to keep up with them is draining. As a small business operator with fluctuating income, keeping up is downright exhausting. Life takes dollars and dollars seem to take time away from the things that will really matter when I’m old and dying (that got dark, sorry).
When Matthias Horx imagines this world of his, I want to believe that he’s saying exchange is vital but that we need to change the focus. That maybe we value that other stuff just as much, or more, as we do the golden coin.
Like when someone works a four-day week so they can garden on the fifth, not for charity or for dollars, just because they want to feed their family home grown food. Let’s reward them.
Like when someone struggles to make ends meet because they give half their time helping their grandparents in old age, let’s not damn their situation with statements like “they wouldn’t struggle if they worked more.” Let’s reward them.
When someone chooses to be a stay-at-home parent, let’s appreciate the total value they contributed to another human life, to this society. Let’s reward them too.
Imagine we valued that kind of contribution, recognising empathy, generosity and passion as an equal contributor to society’s success as much as the navy-blue suited businessperson seated in their high-rise building.
We might make more, buy less. Trade more, throw away less. We might unravel a century of heavy out-of-control commerce and get back to having time to garden or talk to our neighbours.
It’s hard to know what will come out of this virus-changing time. Whether humanity will change or whether we will plod on, unabated, as if nothing really happened.
If I’ve learned anything from Twilight though, it’s this. If it’s possible for a vampire to change centuries of behaviour and live happily as a ‘vegetarian’ then, well, everything is possible.