It's been more than 90 days in captivity and I'm pretty used to it. So of course now is when Ontario decides we are ready for freedom. A few weeks ago the Ontario weather released us from the strictest confinement, allowing us to conduct porch visits or garden chats with friends and neighbors "in the round". It's been great. Yes we have to speak a little louder from six feet away, but that's good vocal exercise. No one could come inside our house, so no need to tidy up for visitors. Win win.
Then this week the Ontario government announced that everyone is allowed to mingle freely (hugs! kisses! indoors!) within a "social circle" of 10 people. Officials shared this news with panache, as thought expecting us all to start cheering like children at a party. As with so much governmental management of the pandemic, however, this is a plan that looks good on a surface that does not bear scratching. To wit:
This graphic has at its center a lovely young line-drawn couple in a big circle while surrounding them like orbiting planets are seven smaller circles (one containing another couple, the others all singles) to reach that magic number ten. All fine and good from the perspective of the lucky pair in the middle, the sun so to speak, but tough bananas for their satellites who are now confined (legally) to this one star system. Can the government not see that everyone wants to be the sun and have their own nearest and dearest orbiting them? To ourselves we are all "ego," as anthropologists call the person at the heart of a kinship diagram.
If everyone creates their own bespoke solar system, of course, the whole idea of confining viral transmission to these ten individuals topples under the weight of an ever-expanding galaxy of Venn diagrams. My first thought upon seeing the plan was "Oy! Has anyone on this committee completed high school math? With a passing grade?" Secondly I wondered whether the Committee, whatever and wherever it is, included psychologists or other social scientists. Elementary school politics are all set to play out here. "You can be in my circle. You are not in my circle. Nyah, nyah, nyah." State-sanctioned bullying. State-*mandated* bullying. My friendship-deficient childhood flashes before my eyes.
Isolation and captivity feel like much less of a hardship in comparison (and I know that I write from the privileged position of having a comfortable haven in which to isolate. I am endlessly grateful for it.) Isolation has come to seem paradoxically like a form of freedom (Lockdown and Stockholm Syndrome). If I don't join a social circle will I have to tidy the house?
Nah.
So there.
Nyah, nyah, nyah.
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| Isolation = peace. |
