Surviving COVID Isolation

draft Isolation is one of the most effective ways to “break” people.

Solitary confinement is used in prison because it works. Whatever the risks and frustrations of being in the larger prison population, they are not as damaging and as intolerable for most people as the intense suffering caused by simply being locked in a cell alone for days and weeks.

Many Americans are going through something similar to solitary confinement due to COVID.

Those of us who have family members with them fare better. But single people who live alone are finding themselves in what amounts to solitary for long stretches of their time. True it is a relatively luxurious solitary, one in which they can watch any television they want, and are surrounded by their own familiar belongings and hobbies. But it is still a long road of aloneness for people who may never have encountered such a thing before in all their busy lives.

The spiritual side of this can be profound, either in the negative of the positive sense. It can push you closer to God. It can also alienate you from your faith community. It can break the bonds that tie you to your church and church family, simply by imposing an emotional distance that stretches over sufficient length of time.

How this will play out in the long term for Americans as individuals and for us as a people remains to be seen. But I do think that some pieces of it will have stay with us after the pandemic has ended.