As I sit in the dining hall in my last year at Muhlenberg College, I can’t help but wonder, whatever happened to the new normal that we all talked about during quarantine? I’m thinking back to when we were all home. We saw so many issues within our society come to light as we were all stuck in our own homes with the world shut down around us. And we talked about them. We posted about them. We discussed them in our online Zoom classes. There was so much that we wanted to change when we got back to school.
Well, here we are— back at school. Back on campus for most of us. And I’m looking around wondering, where’d that energy go? One thing, in particular, has really been on my mind lately as I rush around campus trying to get everything accomplished. Eating. Yes, the thing everyone seems to forget to do here. I remember so many conversations about self-care and leaving time to eat when we were home. When we as students experienced time away from the unbearable weight of capitalism, we were reminded of the importance of taking care of our own bodies. We found time—no—we made time for ourselves. We made time for our bodies to rest. We made time for our minds to relax, even with the extreme pressure and stress that was felt by many at the height of the pandemic. We made time for ourselves to eat.
But now, I overhear students talking about how they forgot to eat lunch. How they haven’t eaten anything since 7 a.m. and now it’s 7 p.m. How yesterday all they ate were granola bars and some pasta from Mule Express because they had to go to classes and meetings all day and didn’t have time to eat. How dinner was their first meal all day. We are not built to live like this. We cannot continue to abuse our bodies in this way as a result of capitalism infringing itself back into our lives. We know how to take care of ourselves, so why aren’t we doing it?
We need to re-teach ourselves how to balance all the stressors of being a college student, still living in a worldwide pandemic, working—for many of us—and being living, breathing, functioning humans. And when we see someone who we love neglecting the latter identity, we need to support them, remind them, and show them that there is a way to balance everything all at once. We can lean on each other. After all, isn’t that what communities are for?
