It may feel like a century ago, but barely four years have passed since the severest days of the Covid-19 lockdowns.
Think back to the shocking measures adopted during the spring of 2020: children were sent home from their schools, employees were banished from their places of work, and the faithful were uprooted from their churches, synagogues, or other places of worship.
In what we can now see was a profound overreaction, these curtailments of Americans’ liberties were made in the name of shielding them from a virus whose effects—for most people, most of the time—resembled a common cold.
But lately, I have been engaging in some healthy self-reflection: What did I miss most during the pandemic’s forced period of austerity? Was it the truly essential things, like those I just enumerated? Or was I pining for far more inconsequential things?
If you had asked me four years ago, I would have…
