The strange days continue. Like many others, I'll be working from home for a while in an effort to slow down the spread of COVID-19. If, collectively, we succeed, we may just save the health care system from being overwhelmed, and maybe some lives will be saved.
Like many middle-aged folk, I miss the vitality I had in my 20s and 30s. Aside from my weight, I'm pretty comfortable in my own skin--but now, more than ever, I wish I had that old spark. Not just because of COVID-19, but because I feel like youth would make it easier to bear the other existential threats to our civilization: climate change, the unsustainable gap between rich and poor, regular assaults on critical thinking and truth itself, and the return of right-wing authoritarianism.
Some of that is nostalgia talking, of course. And in truth, things are not entirely bleak. Even at this early stage of crisis, I've witnessed people pulling together, making smart decisions, listening to experts. And yes, there's been some panic buying, some hoarding. But people do crazy things when they're afraid. And then they calm down and do the right thing.
1 comment:
You and I and nearly everyone we knew back then were far too angst-y to get through something like this unscathed. At the least, our classes would have been cancelled and we'd be out a fair amount of precious funds. At the most, we'd be quarantined in the hovels we lived in at the time. Lest We Forget The Black Potatoes.
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