There is a scene in my mind from a book I read as a child. A boy steps outside his house and starts bouncing a bright red ball. His house is one in a line of identical houses, and every one has a small, identical boy standing outside, bouncing an identical red ball.
It’s dystopian, right? It’s a metaphor for what might become if things are left unchecked. This crisis feels like that to me too. Here in isolation where cases and deaths are relatively few compared to other places, there are moments where I forget what’s happening.
But it doesn’t take long before I am reminded. That back and forth in my mind feels so surreal.
I’ve read several articles that say this is a real opportunity. We can use this time to re-examine our systems (and our personal lives) and figure out how to make them work better. I like that idea. Maybe as a society, we will realize that it’s not only in times of crisis that people are made vulnerable from a lack of basic resources. Maybe all this will make it impossible to deny that trickle-down economics are a farce.
But that view is far from universal. Some people believe everything that’s been done in the name of keeping us safe is a slow, careful conspiracy to encroach on our civil liberties. (I am a fan of civil liberties. The only class I truly loved in law school was civil procedure; I wanted to mount a public campaign to tell people to say no if the police ever asked to search their house or car.) While I find it thought-provoking that this idea never occurred to me, I also find that explanation hard to believe.
It’s disconcerting though, to think that the very same, current world crisis is being viewed by different groups in such a completely different light. How to deal with that?
That news, plus the number of weeks this has gone on, added to the additional weeks it seems are yet to come, is hard to take. It starts to feel like this is never going to end.
Yet in my garden, the tulips are shedding petals, having passed their prime. The iris and the phlox are in bloom now, not missing a beat in the spring floral parade.
My herbs are greening. The allium are preparing to bloom.
What is it with the human mind, that despite all this evidence of constant change, I often feel like whatever is happening now is going to last FOREVER? I fight that fear a lot. Maybe you do too? I have to keep returning to the evidence-based, logical thought: nothing lasts forever. This too shall pass.
