Hello there! Every so often, maybe once a month or so, we do these so-called “chatty” episodes where we split the episode into three segments and take turns speaking about a topic that we found interesting.
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This week, our main segment is on pandemic language. It should come as no surprise that American society and its people tend to reduce systemic failures to personal problems, whether it’s in how we talk about climate change or burnout. So it was fascinating to see that mentality reflected even in the language that Americans were using to describe that all-encompassing, hard-to-pinpoint feeling of living through a pandemic. Examples of ones that have broken through into mainstream discourse: COVID fatigue, brain fog, psychic numbing, and the all-too-popular pandemic wall.
The term originated from a (now deleted) tweet in January by Tanzina Vega, host of the radio show “The Takeaway,” in which she stated:
“Lots of people — including me — are hitting what I’m calling the pandemic wall this week. The burnout from working nonstop, no break from news, childcare, and isolation is hard.”
The most recent iteration of this sort of language is languishing, as termed by a New York Times article that similarly went viral in late April.
Immediately, I noticed something that all of these words had in common, and often it had to do with attention, motivation, focus, and concentration — all of these words pointing to a larger culture built around work and productivity.
So with those definitions in mind, how is one supposed to break through the ‘pandemic wall’ or wade through a sense of ‘languishing’? Unsurprisingly, most of the tips that mental health experts and journalists offer are ones rooted in personal responsibility. It becomes your own burden, your own emotions to keep in check, your own fault for not overcoming this period of intense depression, anxiety, and grief from a world event outside anyone’s control — never mind the failures of the American government that has prolonged this ‘pandemic wall’ we are all experiencing.
Some examples of these “helpful” tips:
From New York Times:
A concept called “flow”: People who became more immersed in their projects managed to avoid languishing and maintained their pre-pandemic happiness. Give yourself some uninterrupted time: We can find solace in experiences that capture our full attention. Focus on a small goal: That means carving out daily time to focus on a challenge that matters to you — an interesting project, a worthwhile goal, a meaningful conversation.
From Forbes:
Take back control of your life. Stay optimistic and believe in yourself. Change your thinking patterns. Take action at work. Acceptance of what you can’t change. Do something — anything — to occupy your mind and time.
From The Washington Post:
Cultivate gratitude, and try to look at all [you] have. Distract yourself. Try “positive self-talk.” Ask for help. Eat some more carbs. When all else fails, just put one foot in front of the other.
While some of this advice may be fine for breaking up some of the monotony of everyday existence and reminding oneself of the pleasure found in small glimmers of joy, it is a curious thing to behold as to just how much of our lives is shaped by consistent productivity — that there is such a lamentation for the loss of time-spent-well during a pandemic, and all of the ways people are trying to regain that time for themselves. It also speaks to a sort of privileged thinking that doesn’t factor in additional stresses of racism or financial precarity that have compounded feelings of depression, anxiety, and grief of merely trying to survive a pandemic. All of this makes any one individual’s lack of motivation or concentration a very minor problem in the whole of American society.
Where is the frustration for the fracturing of a social contract among Americans, whereby we have a large section of the population refusing to wear masks or get the vaccine, defending their individual rights over the collective good? What about ongoing police brutality in the Black community, the wrath of white supremacy to reclaim power and authority, or the epidemic of mass shootings, all of which are deeply American problems? What about the uptick of anti-Asian violence which points to a larger issue of xenophobia and Sinophobia, as well as a fear of immigrants and refugees that undoubtedly has an impact on the growing trend of right-wing politics? What about the constant disregarding of essential workers that keep supply chains running (from delivery drivers to meat plant workers to Amazon warehouse employees), denying them PPE, hazard pay, or safer working conditions?
If people are feeling burned out by their work and needing to keep up with more demands which then fuels more exhaustion, does that not say more about changes that need to happen within their workplace? If people feel overwhelmed by the barrage of horrible news over the past year, as Tanzina Vega seems so burdened by, does that not signal something about how badly we need to change the conditions around us?
What would it mean to extend our individual suffering into one that encompasses the pain of being in a broken society? What would it look like if we took these large-scale events happening outside of ourselves and, instead of turning inwards, we redirected our attention into creating a society that is more cohesive, beneficial, and caring, especially towards the most vulnerable among us?
Instead of distracting ourselves from work and finding another activity to escape in, why don’t we look at ways to unionize our workplaces to improve working conditions for everyone? Instead of turning off the news to keep ourselves sane, why don’t we donate our time or money to local grassroots organizations committed to improving the material lives of our communities? Maybe we should be thinking of ways of producing longer-lasting changes, so we don’t have to be in this cycle of crashing and burning (or running into a ‘pandemic wall’) seemingly every week.
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In this episode, we examine this frustrating tendency of individualizing systemic problems, and then offer words in other languages that better capture intense. complex emotions in response to societal issues and global crises: the Chinese word ‘neijuan’ (内卷), which has the English translation of ‘involution,’ and the German word ‘Weltschmerz,’ which translates to ‘world pain’ or ‘world weariness.’
Also in this episode, we take you on a brief world tour of dumplings, starting with its origins and then its eventual spread to most of the world.
Lastly, we cover the most recent slate of food travel shows by American hosts trying to understand a “nation of immigrants” through its food. What are they trying to tell us, and what gets left unsaid?
Pandemic feelings & language, dumplings, and food travel shows