Covid through the eyes of an extrovert by Hadley Krummel

I was desperately in need of an artistic outlet that represented my experience during the pandemic. Words came the easiest, and I felt like people might relate to my experience. I remember I sat in my dorm to write and words simply fell from my fingertips onto the page. The pandemic was a huge learning moment in my life, and I constantly go back to this work to recognize and remember what I learned and will never forget.

Covid through the eyes of an extrovert

It’s the pool water that brings me back every time. A cold immersion into the earth. Thoughts bouncing in and out of breathlessness. Energy rediscovering muscle and ligament. What used to be the activity I ruthlessly competed in, suddenly silent. No more teammates. No more coaches. No more competition. A jarring shift from social collaboration to singular practice, yet I still dive in.

The question of why has haunted me my whole life. Why is the sky blue? Why am I here? Why the pandemic? I’m wired to believe there’s a reason for everything. I crave meaning and the feeling of being sure of who and what I am, yet this wonderful feeling of uncertainty also brings me effortless gratitude. Somehow, I ended up here, on this place called Earth, not only to live but to be the conscious recipient of the world around me.

Here I find myself alone, isolated. When I get my energy from being with people, how can I possibly be content? Just when I had finally come to the conclusion that I was here on this Earth to be with people, they were taken away from me. Some temporarily and some forever. So I ask myself why. Why did I end up here, thirteen hundred miles from my home searching for a new community only to be brashly thrown into solitude?

So what exactly is it like to be an extroverted first year student at a college today? How can one simply live a life for people through a thirteen-inch screen? You can’t. Your classes will be less engaging, your time spent alone in your dorm. Social interaction has become a black market. Only those who know how to find it benefit, and then it’s smuggled and abused and binged. I joked with my friend the other day that we were in an abusive relationship with a pandemic, yet I think the phrase rings true for so many. How should we respond when people become a luxury binged on the weekends?

So why this isolation? Amid the waterfall of studies telling us to get off of our computers and into the real world, why now? The solitude has forced me to reexamine. If my energy can’t come from people then where should I get it from? This is the message that our world needs to hear right now. Once we are able to rest in solitude, then we can find unhindered happiness in everything we do. Once we accept that all we should have is already within us, social interaction does not become a necessity but a surprising joy: every new meeting a wondrous miracle instead of an expectation. Alone in my dorm room I often find myself hysterical for social interaction. I mope around unsure, unfulfilled, and empty, but then I see one friend and am instantly cured. Yet, desperately requiring energy from something beyond our control will never bring us satisfaction. We have only ourselves to depend on.

So how do we find a constant source of energy and satisfaction solely from within ourselves? It may seem too simple to think that the answer is to live and just be. Yet to live and to mindfully experience life are two very different ideas. In one, we drift from moment to moment, glazed eyes endlessly scrolling from computer to phone. In the latter, a quiet focus of feeling, thinking, seeing, living. It is our experience that guides our life and is the root of our meaning on this Earth. Just being as we are and were made is our sole purpose. We must be an active part of the experience since we were so lucky to have received a part in its existence.

So make every moment an immersion. Don’t just walk through air, breathe in deeply. Let its gentle touch be a reminder of the gift of the human experience.