I’m living alone in my apartment in Washington, DC. Apart from a brief visit from my parents, it has been a little over seven weeks since I’ve had sustained, in-person contact with anybody else.

I’m grateful for the technologies that keep me connected to my family, my girlfriend, and my friends, but prolonged physical isolation is not easy, and it has had some strange effects on me. Some of them are tied up in the seeming unreality of the global pandemic. Some of them are the result of loneliness, silence, lack of physical touch, fear, boredom, from not hearing my name said as much as it used to be, from the increased demands of my job, from walking half-a-mile uphill to the grocery store, glasses fogging up as I breath into my mask, purchasing only that which I can carry home with me.

The virus demands a ruthless efficiency in daily life. Wake up, eat, work, exercise, sleep. At times, the two-dimensionality feels crushing. And yet, there are other times—brief periods of outsized contemplation—when I feel wholly liberated from that two-dimensionality. When I’m running toward the Lincoln Memorial under the soft cover of dusk and the history of the present slaps me in the face. It’s as if I’ve ascended from the present moment and can see myself below, running alongside the reflecting pool in the Spring of 2020. It’s like stepping out of a painting and seeing the canvas hung next to a painting of 9/11, next to a painting of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, next to a painting of the 1918 Flu, all hung up in the Museum of Life-Shaping Events.

Perspective is fundamentally hope-inducing, and I wish I could experience it more. Most of the time, I lack this perspective. Most of the time, it is hard for me to imagine myself beyond the present. I think about the future a lot, but it’s almost impossible for me to imagine the future. A video call overrun with laughter, the robust aroma of coffee, a particularly okay moment of stillness before bed, a book that sucks me in: My happiness comes in little bursts like sugar highs that quickly fade. It isn’t difficult to be positive during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s difficult to stay positive.

II.

I have fewer distractions than ever before, and yet I feel more distracted than ever. Because of this, I’ve come to believe our common misconception about attention is that the greater the reduction in stimuli, the more focused we become. But too little stimuli induces dread, which is distracting. Not only that, but the desire to escape dread is also distracting. In the throes of dread, distraction by any means possible becomes increasingly appealing.

The common antidote to silence-inducing dread is idle chitchat. Idle chitchat is mundane and entirely under-appreciated. It provides the right amount of distraction. It says, Hello, I acknowledge your existence. You have ears and you can hear this. Maybe you are even a little annoyed by my jabbering. But, hey, your annoyance is a feeling. You are feeling which means you exist. It takes little effort to exist like this.

Idle chitchat is just one example of something I’ve come to know more broadly: There’s something wonderfully unpredictable about in-person interaction that is difficult to replicate in isolation. Spontaneity is hard to come by when catching up with friends must be digitally orchestrated. And it’s difficult to be spontaneous on your own. You always know what’s going on inside your head.

III.

Somedays, I wish I could just get on with it. I can deal with sadness, loss, pain, grief, suffering because I can recognize when I feel them, but loneliness is a slippery enemy. It’s hard to see how it mutes me. It’s hard to tell I am pale. I feel most invigorated after hard physical efforts and talking to other people.

Most of the time, experiences happen but they don’t seem to take place. I have WebEx meetings for work that happen but don’t seem to take place. On my runs, the miles click off like the montage of an old film—happening without taking place. I’m home. I eat. I watch a video. All of this happens. But without the recording apparatus of someone else’s gaze, without the processing mechanism of someone else’s perspective, the awareness I have that life is happening is the same awareness I have of brushing my teeth. I can tell you that it happened, but apart from the minty aftertaste, it doesn’t feel like it took place.

In the worst moments, I feel utterly alone. These moments are temporary, but they’ve taught me something important: The condition of the lonely person is an acerbic world filled with things that hurt. Sensation becomes heightened in a particularly unpleasant way. I’m startled when my phone rings. Sunshine hurts my eyes. To remind myself this is mainly a condition of the mind, I’ve taken to smelling the flowers whenever I go outside.

IV.

I take frequent walks in Freedom Park, an urban sanctuary of rare and native plants that I can see from my apartment. One afternoon, when the sky was blue and the breeze was warm, I brought a book with me. As I sat cross-legged reading in the shade of a cherry tree, an elderly man walked past carrying a book under his arm. He was in search of the same, soul-soothing cerebration as me, and this filled me with hope.

Hope looks a little different these days. Hope is taking deep breaths when you are afraid, staying informed without being over-informed, safely and creatively continuing to pursue the things you love. Love this year means patience, commitment to things that aren’t easy, and sacrificing to protect vulnerable populations. This year means rediscovering the spirit of local community, finding fulfillment in family, and acknowledging the indispensable heroism of healthcare professionals. This year also means all of the same inequality that denies certain people access to healthcare and criminally undervalues the lives of Black Americans.

I hope we look back on this year and remember that for the first time in the twenty-first century, humanity faced the same challenge together. We didn’t do it perfectly, but we did it—and we learned from it, and we were better prepared to face the next challenge together. Solving twenty-first-century problems like climate change will require coordinated action on a massive scale. COVID-19 has given us a taste of that response: Massive collective action can happen and with startling speed.

VI.

Today, it is sunny and cold—much colder than it should be for May in DC. As I put on a jacket, I wonder when the summer will come, and if it will bring something other than the uncalendared days of this relentless spring.

Even as I think about summer, I don’t expect things to be very different. It’s tempting to imagine an “after” when everything is normal again. But, in truth, I think the border between pandemic and “after pandemic” is more of a zone than a line. It’s a no-man’s-land of mistakes, setbacks, frustrations, shortages, a convenience store face mask trampled into the sidewalk, and hugging my girlfriend again.

Often, historical events ripple, reverberating until, at some point, what was history suddenly feels normal. It may already be happening to you. The condition of prolonged crisis is the premature return to normalcy. Life goes on, more or less. Whether that is good or bad, I don’t know. I suppose it is what you make of it.