ACEDIA

Hmmm… Not sure if this is quite accurate to describe it.

Acedia: the lost name for the emotion we’re all feeling right now.

This is more complete and somewhat more pointed, and could describe at least part of it. There is no doubt that we’re all somewhere in that process of acceptance of the newness of all this. I should probably just speak for my own feelings and let other people sort out their own. It’s listening to people though and reading their comments on social media. Everyone seems to be at a loss for meaning and purpose.

I might be a step ahead there, having long since accepted that the old “normal” was only normal because it was how it was. There was too much wrong with the way things were going to use a friendly word like normal for it. My quandary is more aligned with the question of what next. What’s next for me? What’s next for the country? For the world?

What’s next for me?

That’s a hard call. I can only speak for what’s present and now. October has slipped by more rapidly than any span of a month I can recall. The listlessness and anxiety has been there, and the inability to focus and concentrate on anything in particular. There is loneliness for sure, but also no real desire to have direct contact with anyone specifically. That’s the paradox of the situation. I can go back through photos and see that it has been a fairly active month. I have been places around the city but almost ghostlike, drifting like vapor between people and possible social contacts. I’ve witnessed people drifting too and fro similarly, nobody really stopping to talk or smile or even make eye contact. We all seem to be spiriting through it.

Well, not all… The cafes and bars that have outdoor spaces are filled more often than not, but with small, individual groups huddled each in their own semi-enclosed space. That’s them though and if they were to be counted it wouldn’t add up to anywhere near the amount of people that would be out and about. There just isn’t a lot of movement.

I don’t know. I can’t even really concentrate on this at the moment. I remember saying in recent weeks that the emotion I’m feeling isn’t necessarily a bad one, but it’s not good either. There is nothing that really pains me emotionally or spiritually. It’s more of a sense of… not quite nothingness, but not quite somethingness. I’ll go ahead and leave that word I’ve invented. It’s what I would normally fill in with “meaning” but that’s not really the right word for this. There is a lack of somethingness.

So acedia is as close as I’ve come to a word to define or explain it. Still, not quite.

Nothing changes if nothing changes though and the words of The Crocodiles are where the solution lies and that’s been increasingly obvious. This emotion will sit over me like a fog unless some major changes are made. Some action must be taken on a personal level because sitting here waiting for the virus to disappear and for the world to lurch back into motion isn’t going to help.

Nothing changes if nothing changes.

Act.

But what?