We’ll Be Different On the Other Side
How is Coronavirus changing our generation?
Many of us remember a grandparent scarred by the Great Depression — still prone to collecting coupons, toothpaste, and cash underneath the mattress.
In these unprecedented times our generation may well be shaped by our Covid-19 experience in ways we can’t yet imagine. I picture my daughter describing me in the future: “That’s my mother. She hoards toilet paper, lentils, and cases of oat milk, just in case another pandemic hits.”
Those who lived between the Great Depression and World War II became the so-called Greatest Generation, forever altered by hardship, shortage; a brutal war and a shared sacrifice. Trauma leaves its mark — culturally and, some believe, epigenetically. We will be the generation shaped by both the trauma of a pandemic and the landscape-shifting onset of climate change.
We’re each coping with the loss of normalcy here in our domestic bunkers, on a conspicuously sliding scale of privilege and wellness. When we come out on the other side, we’ll face new, uncomfortable realities. Will we grow? Will we devolve? Will this be the cultural recalibration so many of us crave?
