“Life is tough, my darling, but so are you,” — Stephanie Bennett Henry

Sometimes I sit for ages, staring at a blank screen, watching the cursor blink on and off, as words escape me. This usually happens when I’m trying to tackle something big and important, and want to do it justice, to show it in the right light. Tonight is one of those times. 

I pulled open my iPad, put on my official writing playlist and…waited. There are a million things I want to say. The words are in me, somewhere, but they are swimming around, jumbled. 

Sometimes the only way out is in. 

It’s been several weeks since the government made it compulsory to wear masks here in Victoria. It still feels weird wrapping my face up every time I go anywhere, and seeing everyone’s wide eyes peeking out above their masked faces. To me, it makes the world feel foreign and disconnected. 

Someone I know put it quite aptly by saying that seeing people wearing masks is a constant reminder that sickness exists in this world. Maybe that’s why I still find it quite unsettling. 

I chanced upon an article by American author, Jay Michaelson, about how mask wearing gives him hope about humanity. He explains how humans are actually more adaptable than we think. We’ve had to get used to more things that we believed we were capable of. 

He believes that mask wearing is a sign of hope, proving the strength of human resilience. If we could get used to wearing masks, surely there is hope for any future things we’ll have to adapt to. 

There was one line in his piece that made me pause:

“But for those of us lucky enough to be merely unhappy, we should take hope in what we’ve been able to get used to.”

Lucky enough to be merely unhappy — what a perfect line. 

There are so many people who have it worse in the world. There are people who have lost their family members, their jobs, their livelihood. People who have been struck from a thousand different angles. 

So, yes, I’d say, I personally am lucky enough to to be “merely unhappy” over this pandemic. 

Like Michaelson, I find the mask wearing difficult. I know it’s for the greater good, and I understand its benefits. But there’s still a sense of my freedom being snatched away, as suffocation sets in, each time I wear one. 

Today, I went out for a short period, equipped with my silk-scarf-mask-contraption, and a bold resolve to get through what I needed to do without unravelling in the process. 

On the way home, driving in the comfort of my car, mask-free, I had some kind of revelation: Mask wearing is inhibiting because it limits our ability to move freely. 

But what do blind or deaf people do? Or anyone, for that matter, with a physical limitation? Imagine having one of your senses completely cut off, removed permanently, not just restricted temporarily. This is something many people have to contend with, and for those people, it never goes away.

I drove off with a touch of added perspective.

To be honest, I still find masks uncomfortable and stifling. It feels constricting, because it creates a barrier with one of our most basic needs — to breathe in and out fresh air. Wearing a mask forces you to lean in to the discomfort and breathe through it. But the reality is that they aren’t permanent. 

There is no easy way out of this pandemic. But, no matter which way you cut it, I’m still one of the luckier ones. I just have to remember that, and maybe that sense of perspective will set in for good.