So here we are in the roaring 20’s. The year when we said that everything was going to be different. Well, we sure as hell weren’t wrong. I mean, who the hell was expecting nationwide shutdowns and quarantines when they were watching the ball drop on new years eve 2019? I know I wasn’t.
Yet here we are only 3 and half months into the new year and sure enough, everything has changed. This virus has made it’s way across the world and for the first time since 2001, the entire world is all looking in the same direction at a single common obstacle.
This obstacle though, it’s much different that one that almost anyone alive has ever faced. 19 years ago the world was standing united against global terrorism at the hands of religious extremists and everyone felt like we were all a bug part of the same community. But this time, something feels different.
This time our enemy isn’t someone or something that we can see so easily and I’m not just talking about the virus. I’m talking about ourselves and our propensity as a group to fall victim to change.
Sure, the virus is certainly a threat. As to what scale, I don’t know, I’m not an epidemiologist. But what I do know is that right now peoples worlds are being turned upside down by the changes and restrictions that have now become a part of their reality
People in general have trouble adjusting to change as it is without being told that they are no longer allowed to go certain places. That alone grates against most peoples sense of independence and personal freedom.
I’m not gonna lie, I’m feeling a bit of it myself. At the time of this writing; outside of the statewide public school closings, rural upstate South Carolina has no shelter-in-place order, no quarantines that I personally know of, and the majority of the restrictions have only been enacted in the larger and more population dense areas. But still, you can feel it.
There’s a very strange energy that seems to be floating around everywhere you go and it’s really hard to lay a finger directly on it. I’ve yet to see people in a full blown panic but you can definitely feel and see the uncertainty in their eyes as they try to move with as much normalcy as they can.
As I sit here on the porch with my coffee and smoking my pipe, my family is inside in bed getting ready to start a new day tomorrow in the “new normal” and I can’t help but wonder how long that’s going to last before it all changes again.
In less than 2 weeks my job will be shutting down. The expected duration is a few weeks but if we’re being realistic, no one really knows for sure about anything right now. Either way, I’ll be home for a few weeks and then will have to adjust to that.
It’s actually funny because working from home full time has been my goal for over a year now and while I’m finally going to get to do it, it’s going to take some getting used to.
Fact is, there are a lot of you out there that are having to get used to the way things are now while waiting for the next change that you’ll have to get used to all over again. Some of you are scared, others worried or just simply indifferent. No matter which, we’re all in the same boat together.
It’s also something that we’ll all get through together, as well. While, I’m certain that things are going to be very different once the dust settles and the smoke clears, I’m also certain that we will also all be different.
Maybe that’s not such a bad thing, though. Not everyone is going to use this time to fix or reevaluate some of the things in their lives that need it, but some will. Some of us are going to come out the other side of this thing with a different perspective than we had going in.
The point is that there is in fact, another side of all of this.
We just all gotta keep going to get to it.
Hang in there. We’ve got this.