The original title of the post was "Isolation," but I kept getting translations to Chinese and Korean that interpreted the meaning of isolation more as "quarantine" and physically separating one away from someone; what I wanted to express is the spiritual emptiness and loneliness accompanying the state of being blocked off from social contact, and "solitude" emerged as a much better term. Solitude is a major cause of depression even in normal times, but especially during a pandemic not being able to have contact with the outside world enhances the depression and loneliness, possibly even causing more serious actions like suicide. It's not going to make the Covid death toll numbers or new infection rate statistics, swept under the rug as one of the hidden downsides in all of this.
In a sense, I am very luckily not to be dealing with Covid during my twenties, when I was mostly alone stuck in a dorm room or apartment room away from my friends or other people. My sister is going through the pandemic during her twenties, and she couldn't stand being in a lonely apartment all by herself in Washington D.C., so she took a break from the isolation and flew back to L.A. to be with my parents. I don't blame her (it's much easier to score free food and goodies at parents' home) but also the powerful feeling of loneliness is a powerful motivator to seek company.
MJ and I recently wanted the Korean movie "Alive" (my Netflix account recommended it after I had binge watched a couple Korean TV dramas "Let's Eat" and Oh My Ghost), but this is much more of a international movie than any of the TV shows we watched that cater to Korean sense of humor and culture. Alive is about a man who lives through a zombie epidemic trapped alone in his apartment without any human contact, zombies prowling just outside the door but unable to get in. There are obvious zombie apocalypse problems like lack of food, lack of water, constant threat of danger of zombies busting in and trying to eat him, but the even more potent threat is that of solitude: he's unable to contact his family during this whole time and when he does, he (spoiler) finds out that they have succumbed to the zombies. Eventually, he becomes so depressed and lonely that he tries to commit suicide.....unsuccessfully. The movie goes on after that (after he realizes there is another non-zombie human being that knows of his existence), but that horrible feeling of being trapped and thought of maybe you are the last person on earth left and there's no one ever to interact with, most people can sympathize with that feeling, even if they can't sympathize with threats of zombies. The movie came out at a great time too, 5 or 6 months into a pandemic where so many people have been forced into their homes by an infectious virus that seems, at least for now, humans don't have a cure for. I thought it was "Wow! A wonderful examination of the human condition!" MJ was like, "Meh." And she doesn't like the Korean actor who plays the main character.
A lot of people are taking anti-solitude into their own hands, by setting up biking journeys, hiking trips, meetings outside, etc., which makes it worse for people who don't want to risk doing those activities but also are seeing other people "escaping to the outside" and breathing the fresh air (although not sure how fresh it is right now in most of California because of the wildfires). It must be how some inmates at a prison feel when they see fellow inmates be released into the free world, except inmates don't have social media to remind them all the time how much fun and social interaction other people are having. The "solitary confinement" punishment seems like even worse than being in normal conditions at a prison, where at least you know there are other people in there doing time with you, horrible as the circumstances might be; solitary can be a form of torture, and understandably causes some inmates to crack and attempt suicide. But just as the end of the "Alive" movie said, keep hope alive, eventually we'll get through it. #alive.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Robert Yan
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