Our lives are made from the things we pay attention to

I thought that was a lovely quote, and an important idea, when I read it in the Guardian last week. It was written in the context of walking in nature, and paying attention to birds, and peace, and beauty.

It's true, certainly to an extent, that we can focus on what we want to remember; what we want to form our experience, what we choose to be important to us. And those memories and those experiences are the essence of what we look back on when we look back upon our life (so far).

Ironic, then, that that was in the Guardian. Over the last week or two I was gradually dipping back into the media - in the form of the Guardian website. It felt, as the grip of 'lockdown' loosened slightly that there was a glimmer of normality appearing; non- (or only tangentially-) Covid stories in the place of the previous focus on the drama and horror of it. I began to lift my self-imposed isolation from the media.

And now I regret it. As the tide of horror has receded, its drama played out, it has been replaced, it seems, with an even more insidious current of judgementalism. Every agony column seems to be about someone 'breaking lockdown' and the agony aunts are no longer the non-judgemental figures we have come to expect, and everything seems to be turning into a witch hunt. There is probably no one in this country whom I dislike more than Dominic Cummings, but to see the way the Guardian - (channels 1985 Neil Kinnock) the Guardian - has hounded and surveilled him has done more than anything to bring me to the brink of despair. 

Now. I am not an epidemiologist, and I am perfectly prepared to err on the side of caution and to accept that the regulations - albeit appallingly drafted - are a necessary and proportionate response to the situation. However, the alacrity with which they are being policed and enforced, in the streets and supermarkets, and in the press and blog comments, by members the general public high on their own self-righteousness, is truly frightening.

Hopefully Covid-19 will be under control within months; how much longer will it take for the poison of self-righteousness, judgementalism, surveillance and suspicion to work its way out of our collective system? Please, everyone - and I'm sure my readers don't need asking this - please let the authorities - the police, the council, the health services - do their job of enforcement. Please save your energy to approach your fellow humans with kindness, not condemnation; sympathy not judgement.

Meanwhile, I once again withdraw from the media, because that is not what I want to pay attention to; that is not what I want my life to be made from, when I look back on this time.