Everyday Life after COVID-19 and the Moral Recalibration of Time

This article examines how the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped the temporal organization and moral meanings of everyday life. Drawing on longitudinal qualitative interviews with the same 13 participants conducted during the 2020 lockdown and again in 2025, the study explores how experiences of temporal disruption were retrospectively reinterpreted and transformed into processes of moral recalibration. Through comparative narrative analysis, the study identifies five temporal-moral orientations (Reclaimed, Serene, Relational, Reflective and Autonomous Time) that capture distinct pathways through which participants reconstructed meaningful temporal lives after crisis, together constituting what we conceptualize as an ethics of rhythm. Building on these findings, the article introduces the concept of moral recalibration through temporal reflexivity to explain how morality is continually negotiated through everyday temporal practices and rhythms rather than through abstract understandings of time. More broadly, it demonstrates how collective disruption can generate enduring forms of temporal reflexivity through which individuals morally recalibrate everyday life.