In these pandemic times I conduct a daily privilege stocktake as I contemplate the months ahead

Beauty can be elusive these dark days.

Eyes widen with wariness above masks, multi-patterned and coloured flourishes that defy the pandemic’s gloom, as we widen our passage on the street and in the supermarket.

But how people smile with their eyes when their mouths are covered! And that is something I’d never had much cause to notice before. Then again, there is quite a lot we are noticing in these pandemic times, about ourselves and others, that we probably didn’t previously see.

Things that were largely remote fears for many of us – health, social, professional, familial, economic – are now much closer to the door. Parting words – “Take care” and “Stay safe” – are now freighted with poignance and real concern, where not long ago they mostly just meant “Bye”.

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New preoccupations aside, where I live it’s not a bad idea to conduct a daily privilege stocktake as we contemplate the yawning months ahead, the blank pages of our diaries, and ask ourselves when next – ever? – we can ink them with actual as opposed to virtual social and work engagements.

Planning! Planning is the trip to buy groceries or booze, the dive into an old cookbook whose recipes we’ve never previously had time to make ... for the cultivation of some vegetables or a rich new inner life. Because, well, time seems abundant these days. Although time now seems to be the commodity whose unfilled (unfulfilled) potential many obsess on the most right now.

Christmas. It’s forever away. On the Never-Never. Usually by August it’s time to well and truly think about it, have family friction over it, plan it – who will go to who’s place, where? Who’s gonna make the gravy? But forget all that until the week before. Put an asterisk and a question mark next to 25 December. Holidays? Travel? My kids don’t let me say or text “LOL”. But really, LOL (ironically). Think 2021, -22, -23. Or not.

Again, check privilege. For this is a tale of many pandemics. Money, job security and housing determine safety and peace of mind. It’s easy to cultivate the veggies along with that ready-to-bloom inner life, to lament the lost holidays, cook the new recipe and take time over the grocery list when you’ve got all that security. Not so much when you live under a bridge with your dog and can’t afford your meds. Or if you’re isolated somewhere with a violent partner and terrified home-schooled kids. Or in 1001 other lamentable circumstances.

I pinch myself daily, sometimes much more, for my good fortune. Meanwhile, how I anger at those carving out fickle notoriety by advocating that the weak can readily be sacrificed in the name of economic rationalism – that it’s no big deal for the elderly or the weak to die alone and terrified, a few months or years ahead of time, just for the sake of the All Ordinaries. That’s another, more disturbing, pandemic discovery: the bylined eugenicist.

In a time of such world order reshuffling, that advocacy can lead to a revisitation of some dark places indeed. A slippery slope.

And let’s face it, there is fear enough in the ether already. Not least fears about how our next generations will negotiate societies that are under threat of disintegration as the global community fragments along the lines of national, state, provincial and potentially suburban self-preservation. How much of this have we already seen? Are we there yet, Dad? Not by a long shot babe, I’m sorry …

No wonder anxiety is already the twin plague, especially for the young.

Related: We are witnessing a critical time in history. You should keep a diary | Paul Daley

So, yes, it’s hard to find the beauty. You need to search it out harder these days. But other times it’s in places you mightn’t have noticed before. In the dog’s tender snuffle. In the child’s distress calmed. In a blue-sky day, in the aromas of fresh coffee and soup burbling on the hob. In learning that these days Abbey Road or the new Taylor Swift or a page or two of Melville will move you unexpectedly to the edge of tears.

After launching another young adult child into the world a few years back, he was unexpectedly returned to our door, the pandemic having vanished his studies, his job and his shelter in another city. Such an unanticipated joy (ours more than his; which almost 22-year-old, having flown so eagerly, wants to return to the nest?) was profound.

But the pain of his leaving a few weeks back was far more intense than the first time he flew at 18. But as is often the case with pain, there was beauty concealed within. Beauty and pain. Lost and found – and lost.

Resilience is a handy trait right now. And seeing your young heading back out into an ever-more-frightening, uncertain world is a beautiful, affirming thing.

Like the smiling eyes of strangers on the street.

• Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist