I can’t ever be sure when these posts are read, if at all. It could even be well into the future, if Supreme Potentate Bill Gates doesn’t remove them from his interweb. As I write this, we are still in the midst, the sort of midst, or never were in the midst, depending on which conspiracy theory floats your boat, of a pandemic. And as such, there are certain words and phrases we’ve gotten sick of hearing. I’m betting you are thinking of a few that grind your gears right now. You’re welcome, BTW. I look forward to the day when we’ve mitigated the risk, acquired herd immunity, and won’t have to social distance from those words and phrases, having developed a vaccination with adequate testing and tracing. We certainly don’t want to self quarantine, or worse yet, require a linguistic ventilator. So let’s flatten the word curve and hope for an effective therapeutic, because we are all in this together.
To be sure, these are uncertain, difficult, and unprecedented times.
And if a pandemic weren’t bad enough, we’re also experiencing tremendous racial and political unrest in these not so United States. What started as mostly peaceful protests over the killing of George Floyd by a police officer have at times devolved into full scale rioting. Do we even remember Mr. Floyd?
Throughout human history, there has been no lack of uncertainty, both collectively and individually. I’m old enough to remember gas shortages, waiting in a long line of vehicles to buy enough fuel with the handful of coins from the couch cushions, car ash tray, and top of the dresser to make it to payday. You youngsters may laugh, but what you pay for a multi-syllabic caffeinated rendering from Starbucks could buy a half tank of gas. Of course the cars we drove only got 11 miles to the gallon, so there’s that. What was my point? Yes, uncertain times. As hard as it would be to convince a teenager running on fumes otherwise, history has been replete with even more dire circumstances. Consider the wars, famines, natural disasters, and diseases locally and abroad, recent and from antiquity. Not to gild the lily, but who thought we’d ever go through a toilet paper shortage? If I heard on the news that giant fire-breathing locusts were headed to the very Starbucks in which I sit, I’d probably shrug my shoulders and mutter under by breath, “There you go”.
We can be certain that there will always be varying degrees of uncertainty. So what should we do?
(Click “Stand on Firmer Ground” for a deeper look into Uncertain Times)