Masks Mandates and the “Return to Normal”
For everyone’s sake, let’s not go back to the old normal.
BY ABBY VELA WITH ART BY MEGAN BORMANN AND NATALIE WILLIAMS
I was shocked to see my friend's mouth for the first time. We had known each other for months but had never met outside a school building or function. I had known this person for six months and had never seen them without a mask on.
This post-covid shock is a somewhat distressing experience; from what I've heard, it is a shared one. We've lived nearly two and a half years stuck behind disposable cotton and trapped in rectangular Zoom boxes.
That was our lives, and as of this school year, it's suddenly not once more. The lifting of the University-wide mask mandate is a drastic change, akin to the end of an era of hiding breakouts and smiling with only your eyes, out with the half-hidden facial expression, and in with the confusion of seeing that masked person in full-faced glory. It's uncanny and startling and just a little scary.
Quarantine has left us starved of face-to-face social interaction. Now that we have it, it's difficult to say what is next. How does one navigate a world trying to "return to normal" when we've forgotten how to be "normal?" Even further, what was "normal" in the first place? I don't know the answers to these questions, not completely, anyway. But, honestly, I don't think anyone else can answer them, either.
If one thing is for certain, society collectively unlearned the value and skill of interacting with others. Essential workers were the most disparaged, and the so-called "high-value" career people could make their six-digit salaries in the comfort of their sterilized homes. Social interaction was looked down upon; solitude was praised. Of course, quarantine was meant to keep us safe, but where does this leave us now?
The lifting of the mask mandate has very little to do with the slowing of positive Covid cases (if it had been, we would have been fully masked all of the Spring 2022 semester). Instead, lifting the mask requirement is this institution's attempt to poorly recreate the world that we slogged through, fearing our employers and those in positions of power. The University gave us the freedom to not wear a mask while raising our tuition by hundreds of dollars in one summer.
I am confused. I am frustrated. I am angry. These are all true. Yet, even with this young-adult angst, I am hyper-aware of my impact on others. I am careful to be kind, and I am deliberate in the way I spend my days. If I am not a force of conscious positivity, I have fallen back into past habits of drifting through this world without direction beyond what society expects of me. I study what makes me fulfilled, I surround myself with people who foster creativity, and above all, I hold my self-worth above that of anyone else. Perhaps it's selfish, but we all deserve to be the center of our own universes.
I don't think we can "return to normal." Quite frankly, I don't think that there's a normal to return to. At least, the normal we'd experience isn't anything like the one we knew before COVID. It won't be anything like before when we realize the value of our work, debt, mental health, and lives. If the pandemic was the end of an era, it started long before our months of collective solitude. With that ending comes a new beginning, one where we've realized that our lives are worth more than any paycheck. We are more valuable than mistreatment by any employer, landlord, government, or higher education institution.
If a return to normal means discrediting my agency as a human being, I'd rather not return.
I was shocked to see my friend's mouth for the first time, but the relief of seeing a smile drowned out that shock. If the lifting of this mask requirement gave us anything, it's the little gift of seeing smiles through something other than a Zoom screen, something I will never take for granted again.