Virus

It seems surreal. As much as I could have read on dystopian stories predicting the worst of human nature, the epitome of what mankind can achieve if left unsaid; of the dark alternative timelines, of bleak gruesome realities; I never imagined it this way.

It's hauntingly, increasingly, normal.

It's scary, the power of adjustment. Of complacency.  Every horrible, terrifying situation we can imagine in life is something we can accustom to. Something to add to our daily lives.

Maybe it is a reflection of human adaptability. It perhaps makes us a stronger, more enduring species. We don't have the strength and speed and capacity of wild animals; but we do adapt better.  We survive. Yesterday's horror is today's normal.

Amidst this reality of social isolation, of quarantine, of distancing is also the truth of how we go on. How we live, how we endure.

Despite the fact that we continue and persist, there's a restless feeling that all this is wrong. A pandemic is wrong. Isolation is wrong. People getting sick and dying is wrong. It's scary to walk down the street and have people walk around you, stare you suspiciously if you have a mask, if you sneeze, if you get too close. It's a paranoia that initially was deemed a media fetishization, a hyperinflation of the worst of the worst. But now it's reality.

It's interesting because from the very beginning it all felt fake, overestimated. But the key to human nature is the brutal fact that we are in denial. We deny how at risk we are, how in danger, how every moment in this world is indeed one that could be taken away at any moment. We are consistently, inevitably, in denial.

The politicization and blame of a pandemic is palpable. Which country is doing better, which country is doing worse - who indeed will find the solution to the virus and who started the virus. What political system helped, what economic factors will occur, what will the demographic look like.
Whatever Orwellian analysis of political response to this crisis you may imagine, has probably occurred or will occur.

Despite this, there's a consistent feature which is forgotten. What makes us, as beings, endure? Although we can be in denial about our unforgiving environments, we are also consistently aware. We process through humour, through love; through values.

Often, at dreary times, we can see the the unimaginable, despicable and horrendous nature of humanity.  One which is selfish, one which lets the elderly  and young to suffer, one which lets people die . But we ignore the persistent consistency of our social links, of our friends, our families and our loved ones. They shine brighter,stronger; they dare to give us hope and remind us kindly that life may be short and brutal; ugly and sick; but it is also a journey; a dream; a light that endures through thick and thin.  It is our souls, our hearts and our beings which together let us continue to not only survive but live fully.