Joyce Fegan: The two things I'm committing to in 2022

social media is no longer filled with faces of smiling families in matching tartan next to Christmas trees and is now populated instead with posts reflecting on 2021.

Have we really processed the preceding two years in order to be able to embrace the brand new one right in front of us?

At the time of writing, social media is no longer filled with faces of smiling families in matching tartan next to Christmas trees and is now populated instead with posts reflecting on 2021. 

But at the time of publication, I’m sure the machine will have moved on to people professing their resolutions and intentions for 2022.

It’s always a hopeful act, annual intention-setting, algorithms and trends aside.

But before we go there, a moment to take stock of the last 22 months, because intention setting doesn’t seem to be where the gauge of the national barometer is falling right now.

That we have been living in a state of hyper vigilance is news to no one, but, no one is really talking about that either. 

The effect of that on the nervous system is something that will take time to come down from, and we are not there yet.

We are living in a state of flux, as American social psychologist Amy Cuddy has written.

Time is another thing that’s been impacted.

I used to think I was alone when I constantly referred to 2021 as 2020. It’s as if the pandemic caused time to contract, or expand, I am not sure which, meaning that two years blended into one in my mind.

I would say “that birthday last summer”, and my co-converser would nod along with the non-verbal cue that they were following the story until we’d both stop to realise that yet again, we were referring to 2020.

What will happen to 2022 — will three years of a pandemic merge into one?

This time last year, we were headed into a lockdown, but it was to be worth the wait — the vaccine was coming. Little did we think that Delta and Omicron were coming too.

Now we are versed in the Greek alphabet, how far up to swab your own nasal passage, until you reach your eye apparently, and what a false negative actually means — no longer the preserve of a person in the possession of a working womb.

A friend best described all of this, in a large WhatsApp group (more on that medium of communication later), as “dodging invisible bullets in a wide open battlefield”.

As long as I live I will never forget those words, words that prompted a sigh, a dropping of the shoulders and an internal recognition of a statement laden with truth.

We can go about our business as usual, and as best we can, pretend we are “living with” or have “forgotten about” the C word, but still we wear masks, sanitise our hands, hold them back when introduced to someone new, unconsciously count case numbers over heard on headlines or gleaned from alerts on screens and become experts in the self-administering of tests.

As life remains in limbo, it feels bizarre to state definite intentions for the future.

We all deserve better than a “how r u?” served up over a Mark Zuckerberg app.

But here we are, at the start of a new year, where the custom is to take stock, consider where we’re going, what we’d like more and less of. We think about actions we can take, ways of being we can cultivate.

I read an article about two things its writer was grateful for. It was truthful in its content and simple in its sentiment.

Here are two things, because two is genuinely only what comes to mind, that I want to change in 2022.

The first pertains to WhatsApp.

Connection has been a casualty of Covid. Complacency has set in. In the beginning, busy people heralded the fire road that the restrictions placed in their relentless schedules of back-to-back training, matches, parties, playdates and meet-ups of a single Saturday.

Now, where are we? How often do you meet a good friend for a coffee or a chat, the way we used to?

That ease of repartee that occurred of its own accord outside of churches, or in supermarket car parks, or school gates, will that return? 

We had these spontaneous moments of life-affirming and serotonin-creating connection that have been replaced by distance-keep-ing and hyper-vigilance.

If a friend tries to arrange an in-real-life meet-up if public health guidelines allow, there seems to always be someone isolating or else just fallen into the complacency of not bothering.

Bother. Let’s bother. In 2022, let’s really, really bother.

In the tail end of this year, a friend rang me high on life, I could hear the serotonin surge down the phone from 200 miles away. She was just back from lunch with old colleagues. No drink was had, but conversation was plentiful as was ease of company.

Where phones, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram can give us an illusion of connection, 2022 will see me digitally detox in favour of real-life interactions and connection.

We all deserve better than a “how r u?” served up over a Mark Zuckerberg app. I’ll call you to ask, or better yet, look you in the eye to ask and then listen hard.

Make calls. See people, in the flesh.

To number two.

If the virus has taught us nothing as a planet, it’s surely that no one is safe until we’re all safe. In a world where privileged people got defensive when their privilege was pointed out to them, us privileged folk have really seen what the pointer-outers were on about it.

By the end of November, 54.2% of the global population had received at least one vaccine dose. For low-income countries, however, the rate was just 5.8%.

If you’re of the “let them eat cake” variety or have the myth mindset that “poverty is a matter of personal responsibility”, explain the latter to us.

Is it the fault of lower income nations that wealthy nations got their hands on most of the doses?

And can we now see that if we don’t take care of our least privileged citizens, that their lack of wellbeing affects us?

We are all in this together.

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So the second resolution?

Be a better ally to everyone. Listen to people who do not have the privileges we take for granted, be that skin colour, education or economic status. Don’t jump in to fix or save. Listen.

Educate yourself. Find out how long it takes for someone in Ireland to be granted asylum and how they go about getting a job afterwards. Do you have a job you can offer or a connection you can make?

And educate yourself again, check your sources of information on everything. Is it a man in America with a microphone and an audience — and income — he grows by being a shock jock? Or is it a person who’s accountable to laws, press councils and an editor or three?

Is it a coach on social media with a staunch, obsessive agenda based on a hidden personal value? Or is it verified science that has undergone a robust and independent review process?

Here’s to 2022, where I’ll connect in the flesh and put my ears, eyes, and mouth — in that sequence — where my privilege is.