February 16, 2022
Life has a rhythm, and for the
most part, that rhythm is as familiar as our own reflections. And when we
can move to it, when we can function within it, it’s a blanket of comfort that covers
us with a sense of security, that feeling that all’s right with the world.
The last couple of years have
shaken that sense of comfort, so that we are all of us together, in this moment
in time, looking for our new familiar rhythm. I don’t know about you? But I am
grateful to know it’s not just me hitting discordant notes as we bump along
this Covid-lined path that life since 2020 has become.
I read somewhere once that the
only people who like change are wet babies. I think for the most part,
that saying is true. Most of us like a little bit a programmed change, as in, “oh,
let’s do that on Saturday. That will be different, and fun!” But the kind of
change that makes us feel afraid and powerless? The kind of change that upsets
all of our patterns, that more or less unmoors us from the security that we
need? That’s tough for most of us to deal with.
Friends, we humans need constancy,
and we need to know the boundaries. Once we have those boundaries, we make
ourselves happy (or not) within them. We understand the norms, the rules, and
we can work with them.
But when the rules and the norms
change, and change and change….that’s when we have a problem. Also, because of
the ease of survival in these modern times, our stamina for stressful
situations is very limited.
If we’re students of history,
then we know there have been times through the ages when humans had no
guarantees of living even into their fifties. There were wars and famine, there
were harsh living conditions. There were plagues in medieval times for which
there was no cure, no vaccine, no medication, and no escape. There were no day
spas to sooth the pampered souls that too many of us, in this day and age, have
become.
You’ve heard the term “snowflake”?
There’s a reason that is a term, and that reason is a lot of us. Has
there ever been a generation alive on this planet that is more wimpy? I think
not.
During my first full time job,
just after David and I got married (nearly 50 years ago!) I had a co-worker who
had been born in England. She told me that after a couple of years of war, the people
got used to all sorts of upheaval. During those fraught years, she went to work
in London, a young woman doing the best she could to do a job and live her life.
One day while she was working away, an explosion happened nearby, and a lightweight
light fixture fell from the ceiling above her onto the chap working across from
her. And the old woman beside her didn’t even jump, she just looked over at
him, slumped over as he was, and said, “he’ll be fine in a moment.”
Some would call that being
tough, and some would call it being totally insensitive, but what that old woman’s
behavior was, was adaptive.
During the Spanish Flu
pandemic of the last century, people didn’t have the wealth of knowledge that we
have now, and didn’t understand the science, which was really still in infancy.
As a result, many more people died, world-wide than have died in this pandemic.
None of us can control the
world around us. We can’t make our neighbors wear a mask or take the vaccine;
we can’t make people see things the way we see them. Everyone has their own
point of view, forms their own beliefs, and rare is the time when someone who
hangs onto those beliefs with both fists can be convinced that their “truth”
isn’t “truth” at all.
The only thing we can control,
in fact, is ourselves, and what we do. David and I have understood as
the scientists have learned more about this virus (it was called a novel
coronavirus because it was brand new, after all), that what they
understood about it would change, it would evolve, which also changed the knowledge
of how best to deal with it. We understood that part of the equation and don’t
consider that evolution to be “flip-flopping”. It’s not politics, it’s science
and it evolves.
Just recently the Ontario
government has announced that the restrictions are being lifted. In our
opinion, they are being lifted not because the danger of infection is past, but
because people have decided that we do have to learn how to live with this in
our lives—since it’s not going to go away anytime soon. And they are being
lifted because a sufficient number of people have cried, “enough, already!”
Therefore, for our part, we’ve
decided that we’re going to limit where we go and we’ll wear our masks when we go
there. We’re going to monitor the suggestions with regard to a possible fourth
shot. If our local health officials say we should have it, we’re rolling up our
sleeves.
And that will form the basis
of our new rhythm. And since it’s not an overly complicated one, I’m sure we’ll
do just fine.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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