In many places, where vaccines have been available and accepted, the COVID-19 pandemic is waning. Restrictions on social contact are being lifted. Soon, people will be able to emerge from their homes, and meet others, up close, without masks.
It’s what we have all been longing for, and yet, now that it’s becoming possible, many of us are hesitating. Somehow, the idea of ending our isolation feels wrong. It doesn’t make rational sense, but the aversion is there nonetheless. It is an emotion approaching trepidation, but without even getting as far as that kind of eager hesitation. While trepidation says yes, but, this feeling simply says no.
Scientific American describes the emotion as cave syndrome, because it feels as if we stand at the mouth of a cave that has kept us safely hidden during dangerous times, worried about what happens if we leave it behind. It’s not really a syndrome, of course. There’s no biological pathogen or genetic mutation involved. It can’t even be ascribed to any individual person alone. Cave syndrome is an emotional reaction to a social structure that has broken. It’s a manifestation of a problem we created together, even as we were forced apart.
Categorizing cave syndrome as a medical condition to be treated rather than as an existential shift in one’s relationship with the world isn’t just a clinical decision. It’s also an emotional coping mechanism, one that enables people to avoid confronting the disturbing implications of isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Treating cave syndrome as a state of illness allows people to pretend that there is nothing to learn about the human condition from global social distancing. It allows them to pretend that they can merely go through a course of psychotherapy, take medication for a while, and have the problem solved.
Medication and talking with a counselor won’t solve the problem of a global society that can fall apart at any time. There is no treatment for shattered illusions. The illusion of stability always was an illusion. No pharmaceutical intervention or cognitive behavioral therapy will change that.
We need to leave the cave, but we are also right to fear its loss.
The world outside is full of possibility, but its scale places it far beyond the control we can achieve inside our caves. During the pandemic, we have cultivated the promise of chrysalism, the pleasant feeling of watching an external world in tumult while remaining protected inside a small shelter. Chrysalism can lead to the less agreeable emotion of cave syndrome by exaggerating the power of the small inside world to keep us safe.
There is nowhere that we are beyond the touch of disaster. When we feel cave syndrome holding us back, we might do well to look back at our caves with an honest eye, to see not only the comfort and safety that they provided, but also the mess of desperate loneliness that has accumulated in their corners.
