The Corona Comfort Zone

I suspect what I'm about to say will sound terrible, but I'm going to say it anyway: When shops and cafés closed on 18 March that year and the population was asked to self-isolate because of Corona, that was a joy for me. Don't get me wrong, I found the many deaths that Corona claimed to be terrible. The fact that people would suffer financially and existential anxieties would arise stirred compassion and concern for our society in me. That family members were no longer allowed to visit their parents and grandparents made me infinitely sad. For me personally, however, I was delighted. Being at home with my cat and my parents is located right in the middle of my comfort zone, where it is warm and cosy. As someone who is rather introverted and experiences social anxiety, I often felt the pressure (mostly from myself) to do something with people, but the mere thought of it often made me tired and nervous at the same time. 

When it was announced that all shops would close and Mrs Merkel asked us in her 13-minute address to stay at home, I knew that my friends and I are reasonable people and would follow the instructions. Unlike many people, I felt joy, because that meant: there is no pressure to do anything. I would no longer have to fear FOMO (fear of missing out), because now I would know that not only I was not socialising, but everyone. Being able to stay at home without experiencing FOMO felt like a gift from the universe!

When quarantine began, I felt so well that I could not have been happier. Like everyone else, the news about people's deaths made me sad and anxious. I am not an inhuman person. For me personally, however, it was a dream. When the semester started, for the first time since I began my studies, I was not worried about whether I would meet nice people in my courses. All events were held online and I did not need to have this fear that semester. And although one had to learn many new soft skills, such as how to use various video chat platforms, everything felt wonderful. 

Months passed. I felt so completely content that I did not give a thought to how things would continue once quarantine was over. I was so warm and snug trapped in my comfort zone that I could not think about it eventually ending. But then something unexpected happened: I started to long for café visits with my friends. I started to miss human interaction and the exciting feeling before a new semester. The comfort zone of my four walls no longer felt like a warm blanket on a rainy day, as it always had before. It felt more like jeans that are too small, but because they were once so comfortable, you refuse to give them away – in the hope that you will fit into them again. The pandemic showed me that my comfort zone, in the long run, is far from as beautiful as I had always imagined it to be. 

The comfort zone proved to be a place for brief retreats, a place of rest, but not a place where one wants to live. Staying in the comfort zone for too long taught me that things that make me restless and sometimes tired are exciting. Meeting new people is not easy for me, but feeling no nervousness and excitement makes life monotonous. Quarantine made me want to see my friends more often and look forward to first Tinder dates again. The Corona comfort zone made me feel anticipation for things I had previously shied away from out of fear, because: what is a life without any excitement? 

Life in the comfort zone is incredibly cosy, but a life worth living has never been described with the word "cosy". When Corona rules were relaxed and you were allowed to meet people from other households again, I threw myself headlong (and in a Corona-compliant manner) into life. As I sat on the train on my way to meet my girlfriends, I noticed: I no longer felt nervousness, but gratitude.

Xenia Hoff