After the Storm

“When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” Haruki Murakami

For some, this is a time of unusual peace. For others, they are weathering a storm.

You may be wondering how all of this will affect how we see the world, and what we want in life.

For some, the lockdown of 2020 will fuel and raise their ambitions. “They sicken of the calm who know the storm” as Dorothy Parker said. New plots will be hatched, new ventures imagined.

For others, the grounding will have the opposite effect. Time with loved ones and at home will make them question their previous routines, pace and choices. Life in future will be slower, more modest, somehow less ambitious.

Perhaps for you, it will be more complex. Less about raising or lowering ambition, and more about change. As Benedick muses in Much Ado About Nothing, “Doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age”.

Many will realise that, before the crisis, they simply weren’t doing what they wanted to do. They had become stuck or lost. Or perhaps they will sense the end of a chapter. A time to move on.

One potential symptom of this virus is a loss of taste. I suspect that a wider effect will be a change in appetite.