There’s an element of misunderstanding for many of us during this time of crisis. Most of us, I expect, would rather be working, if we are among the millions now unemployed, furloughed, or stranded somewhere. If the work is front line work, in the hospitals, for instance, it’s scary work. Scary, but meaningful. Life-saving is always meaningful.
Then there are others, fortunate to work from home, or less fortunate but still required to work – delivery-service who may run the risk of infection from the job,
There’s information, there’s misinformation, and there’s fear. The fear is what gets at the heart of it. A fear that’s been creeping into the Country long before the virus emerged. A fear that life, as it was before, will never be seen again.
It’s the fear of men and women who don’t know what the new normal looks like, and the fear of younger generations who don’t know what the new ‘new normal’ will look like. We’ve been heading down this path for a while, with shifting populations, immigration ebbing and flowing, social preferences and liberalities altering on a seemingly daily basis.
What all of this should tell us is that: There is no certainty. We could fight so hard for the America we remember as children, to restore it to what we view as its former glory, only to have even that which we’ve come to know replaced by an unexpected epidemic.
New normals will inevitably come, to be again replaced by something newer. We shouldn’t grip so tightly onto the past that we don’t savor the present. Because something could be waiting around the corner to shake the present loose, and we might like what comes after even less.
Michael's Musings 