2020 - Teachable Moments...?

Here's what living during a pandemic has taught me:

Ear muscles are not strong enough. Maybe I just have weak ears. They simply are not holding up against the pull of a mask.

When I went to two masks, I feared my ears would remain for all time, curled over and crunched.

Hopefully our next generations will grow to have stronger ear muscle resistance.

Or else we'll see face protection in the future that does not involve the ears.

Secondly, I just assumed, as did many other people (I bet), that wearing a mask would help to block out smells. I had particularly hoped that that would manifest itself as protection against phantom supermarket flatulence. But it did not.

However, I have been able to cut way down on the amount of face makeup I wear. Masks just rub it off.

And when I wear it in the neutral position lowered from my mouth and covering my chin, it covers my double chin. That is a major win!

I can also talk to myself all day long, without anyone seeing my lips move. These are definite benefits.

Sadly though, I've come to see how unpleasant it is for many of us, to simply spend time living simply. Or quietly. Or isolated and in solitude…without complaint.

We seem to need stimulation from outside ourselves, in order to be happy. We are so rigid, and intolerant, that a temporary inconvenience, turns us apoplectic.

Naturally it doesn't apply to everyone. Many have families and many have adapted to the inconvenience. But I don't think that collectively, we know how to be alone with ourselves.

And many don’t know how to suffer with dignity.

On the grandest of scale, it has become crystal clear to me, what weak and whiny humans we can be, compared to, say.... the Conestoga covered wagon people. Or the people who sacrificed for war, or pestilence, or poverty, or plague.

Imagine the hundreds of thousands of men, and the few hundred women, that flocked to recruiting stations in the 1940's, or any other year where there was world-wide conflict in which our country was compelled to join.

They left home and family, lied about their age, and died in massive numbers, willingly. They rushed to volunteer, and were gleeful at being drafted, because America collectively wanted to speak with one voice, against the enemy.

Now compare those days, and those people, to today.

We have no true vision of a collective spirit, and as such, we complain about wearing masks, refuse vaccination, and come up with conspiracy theories, rather than ban together against our common enemy.

Even when faced with enormous covid fatality numbers, where senior citizens, and now babies and young children, are dying… we insist on our right to say ‘no’ to a vaccine, rather than caring how those selfish attitudes threaten the rest of us.

A ‘greater good’ no longer seems to exist.

Even in the face of seeing the pandemic escalate once again, some of us choose our own self-interest over the common good.

Self-centered, selfish, uninformed, arrogant and down-right heartless...

I hate to say this, but we are a spoiled and entitled generation.

It's one thing to collectively suffer through the realities of life…. Together.

It's another thing to expect that you shouldn't have to, decide that you won’t, and sabotage our collective recovery. (And THEN complain when it takes even longer to recover!)

Do we still ask WWJD?

In this case (all cases), we need to.