The holidays of 2020 were a non-event. We spent the traditionally most hyper-social weeks of the year hiding in our homes and avoiding other human beings like the plague they were. And, here we are, stumbling through yet another holiday season overshadowed by a pandemic that has been playing havoc with the familiar pattern of the global status quo for almost two full years. What gives?
Last New Years, despite warnings from an over-stretched and largely ignored scientific community, the world decided that the pandemic would fade into history before the end of 2021. The virus would recede, if only because we demanded it do so, and things would get back to “normal.” Because we were not going to settle for anything less than full restoration of our pre-pandemic lives. And we all know how that has worked out.
On social media, there has been strident lamentation that the promise we water-boarded out of Baby New Year 2021 has been criminally welshed upon.
I’ve run up against a tidal wave of wailing and gnashing of teeth because 2021 has turned out to be as much an aggressive bust as 2020. Family, friends, 95% of the internet is grousing and grumbling that they are sick of this pandemic shit, SO over the restrictions, and convinced, after 24 months of “deprivation,” that life is not going to ever get better. Our bra-less, sweat-panted bodies, remote in one dessicated hand, phone in the other, will molder to dust in our empty homes, never again to occupy our favorite table at Applebees or gleefully dig through the after-holiday sales counters at Macy’s.
Oh, waaah!
Seriously, do I have to write a “ten things” list about why 2021 was such an exponential improvement over 2020?
Apparently, I do. So here it is:
1.)Donald Trump is no longer president of the United States.
2.)We learned that the virus is not easily transmitted by surface contact, and therefore we don’t have to bleach/sanitize our groceries or anything else that comes through the front door.
3.)Trump was banned from social media. No more getting up in the morning and cringing in fear of what the asshole-in-chief had blasted out over Twitter while we were sleeping.
4.) Shortages of basic necessities like toilet paper, paper towels, hand sanitizer, disinfectants and N95 masks have eased. Apparently, “enterprising” Americans grew bored of buying up these commodities and then selling them on ebay for thousands of $$$ in profits. Ah…capitalism!
5.) Donald Trump is no longer president of the United States.
6.) Vaccines and new treatments have given us some confidence that if we DO catch this thing, we might not actually die from it.
7.) Melania Trump was not in charge of the White House Christmas decorations this year.
8.) The creation of our family “pod” allowed the eight of us to get together on Thanksgiving AND Christmas with reasonable expectations of safety.
9.) I have become proficient at navigating “curbside pick-up” sites and apps.
10.) Donald Trump is no longer president of the United States. This cannot be celebrated enough.
Things ARE looking up, if not quite as far up as we demanded they would by now. It might be said that things would have been hard pressed to get any lower, so there was no place to go BUT up. Still, it doesn’t do not to acknowledge the good things just because you’re determined to continue to wallow in the bad.
There’s an essential lesson to be gleaned from our first modern experience of a global pandemic: We need to quit wishing, hoping, expecting, demanding things get back to “normal.” That which we perceived as “normal” 24 months ago is as gone as the last dinosaurs. And if we don’t resolve to make use of the great brains and opposable thumbs that separate us from all other terrestrial creatures, past and present, we will be the next species to trudge into the mists of extinction.
Because we have two options if we want to continue to live here on earth: “Adapt or die.” Those are our choices. There is no “Wrestle the earth and make it adapt to us.” We’ve been trying to do that for centuries. And it has only served to hurry us along on the road to our own destruction.
Economically speaking, businesses and industries that adapt to commerce in a post-pandemic world are the ones that will survive and thrive. Old business models that gained dominance through abusive employment practices will suffer. After all, who wants to risk their lives for wages that have to be government subsidized to even keep a roof over ones head? And how about bringing manufacturing back to this side of the ocean, so our supply chains become less dependent upon trans-oceanic transportation and how other countries conduct production in a pandemic?
Can’t get people to come work for you? Putting up signs blaming the government is not going to save your ass. Declaring an entire class of people “expendable” in the name of shoring up a rotten economic structure that needed little more than a nudge to send it crashing down, won’t carry you into the future, either. We’re looking at a future where humans who are cautious, thoughtful and less frivolously social are more likely to survive than those who wish the pandemic away and crash ahead exactly as they always have because they refuse to “live in fear.”
And, by the way, a corollary to adapting is to just…adapt. Move forward. The ways of the past are exactly that. Past. And certainly no part of anyone’s personal, uncontestable, self-serving “rights.”
Get over it and move on. The future will be enjoyed by those of us who do. And meanwhile, we’ll do our best to appreciate what there is to enjoy right now, as well. Because…why wallow?
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