"Well, I'm back": Frodo, Sam, and Life Toward the End of the Pandemic

 

"Well, I'm back."

- Samwise Gamgee at the end of The Return of the King

I’ve been thinking lately about the impending end(?) of the pandemic on the horizon sometime later this year (hopefully? ... at least this pandemic?). 

Going back to “normal” society is going to be weird and difficult for a lot of people. I don’t even mean for introverts. I greatly dislike the tendency to bifurcate humanity into introverts and extroverts. I’ve gotten more introverted during all this, but I used to enjoy going out and being in public and seeing my friends. In the Before Times (let's call it the Third Age), I found it quite easy to be more extroverted in social contexts where I’m supposed to be speaking. This is why I like teaching in person or giving conference talks--or I did before, anyway.

 

As I start to think about post-vaccination plans, I'm more and more realizing that it will be hard to do anything without some scars of the anxieties I’ve developed in the last year. 

I thought of a metaphor recently: For many of us who bear the scars of this pandemic, returning to “normal” social interaction is going to be a lot like when the Hobbits returned to the Shire after saving Middle-Earth (hopefully without the Scouring of the Shire!). They all carried their physical and psychical scars with them, and never felt quite at home the same way again. 

Some of them managed to thrive along with these life-altering scars, to make a successful return to social interaction. Sam became the Mayor of the Shire, while (and I admit I had to check the appendices of The Return of the King to get this right) Merry became Master of Buckland and Pippin became the Took and Thain. Likewise, most of us will make a return to in-person society, changed though we may be. 

But for Frodo, the weight of these scars proved to be too much, and he was never made whole again. Like Frodo, some of us may venture to the Grey Havens to sail to the West of further introversion, forever altered by this experience.

 

I imagine only the COVID deniers or most unreflective or oblivious among us will remain relatively unscathed by this pandemic. Although to be honest, the more I venture into public the more relatively unscathed the majority of people appear to me... perhaps they're simply hiding it better than I am?

But unlike those four Hobbits, there will be a lot more of us with these scars. I hope we’ll be able to talk about our scars with each other, to share battle stories over a pint of ale or a mug of tea. I hope we’ll be able to work with the ways this pandemic has changed us, rather than fighting against these changes in some misguided leap into “normality.” 

Mostly I hope these timeless months of isolation will teach us to be more patient and compassionate toward ourselves and others. We are not the same people we were in February 2020. And it’s okay to admit that. This is the only way we'll heal and become as whole as we can.

I had forgotten this until I checked the appendices of my trusty old copy of The Return of the King, but Sam also went to the Grey Havens after his wife Rose died. So even those of us who are high functioning post-pandemic socialites may need to seek some respite in that far green country of introversion.

 

Of course, the pandemic is most assuredly not over yet. And it’s good to admit that, too. Please, let's not extend this thing by declaring a premature victory. Wear your mask and social distance as needed.

 

Yet long after the triumphant return of the king of normal social interaction, when the virus and its variants cease to be a major threat in some future month or year, this pandemic will always be with us, seared into our anxieties, lurking between the two towers of our fears and our dreams. Not all of us made it. And those of us who did are forever changed. 

Some of us, like Sam, will emerge to make contributions to the future social order. Others, like Frodo, may be unable to fully reintegrate, never quite made whole again. But as those brave Hobbits show us, seemingly impossible journeys there and back again are sustained by fellowship and friendship and compassion—the very goods worth fighting for.

 

My old (c. late 1980's) copy of The Return of the King