Way too alert to the ever-changing news, I find I’m getting more caught up in network waves of hopeless thinking, sadly-speculated scenarios and general maladaptation to the new normal than I would like. And I suspect I’m not alone.
It’s no help that I haven’t seen nor touched a living human being in weeks and now witness more televised refrigerator trucks full of dead bodies than any healthy psyche should. I’m on my 17th day working alone from home 40 miles from everything and everyone I cherished as normal, welcome impositions to my day. I’m now thinking some of what I’ve considered temporary accommodating changes may soon become eerily permanent.
We’ve been told who and what is essential, and my head is working overtime without permission connecting all the dots of what’s to come, weighing alternate endings, and being entirely futile at the expense of decent sleep. So many possible end games. So many tipping dominoes of a world and economy likely to continue its decline long after I’m gone from this earth.
Having lost our health and wealth and so many departures of loved ones before their due dates, the only way to break from this gloom is time travel.
Set a future date, go there, and envision life without this black swan. One thing unique to our species is vision. It pulls us into, across and through tragedy and we have always, always emerged victorious. This ain’t the end. Not even close.
Where there is no vision, the people perish.—Proverbs 29:18