Did I Go to Sleep and Wake Up on a Different Planet?
We live in a world where up is down and backwards is forwards. We know things have changed, but still, we apply our lipstick and leave the house each day pretending everything’s ok.
Please, let everything be ok.
My sister’s friend who is a mortgage underwriter lost her job today, a job that they were desperate to fill barely a year ago. Her sign on bonus was huge. She’s had years of experience and had never seen anything like this before. Yet, during a zoom meeting, she was told that at noon today she would no longer have a job. Suddenly, she was unemployed. She was offered a month’s worth of health insurance. That’s it.
Meanwhile, I called the airlines today looking to talk to an agent and was told that they would call me back in four hours.
A four-hour wait time! Five hours later, an agent returned my call. While waiting for the call, I tried to put together a grocery list for a curbside pickup. One thing after another was out of stock. Not just my favorite asian salad mix but almost all salad mixes. Not just my coffee creamer, but almost all coffee creamers.
Then, I get a long text from a friend who’s husband is in the hospital with COVID and it doesn’t sound good.
But that’s not the worst of it. I’m checking my iPhone off and on because Russia invaded the Ukraine and apparently World War III isn’t an impossibility. In fact, everybody in the entire world is checking their phones at this very moment, checking while holding their breath, because the world as we once knew it seems to have disappeared
And, what about the good news?
Well, the CDC announced yesterday that I don’t need to wear a mask when going to Walmart unless I live in a region where the COVID numbers are high and hospitals are overwhelmed. I checked my county on their website and turns out I live in a medium zone, so if I want I can take off my mask next time I go to Walmart. I won’t, but still, I think that qualifies as good news. Right? Right.
My sis, however, lives in a high risk county in Florida. We compared our current COVID outlook and I won.
So, yes, there was a smidgeon of good news, but let’s face it, it’s not enough good news to provide any solid reassurance. Unless, I’m a gifted wishful thinker, I’m forced to admit that everything has changed.
Yet, I look out my window and see people coming and going as though nothing has changed.
Their biggest concerns are whether they’ll get to eat lunch with a few friends at a local restaurant. Their determination to pretend that we’re living our lives as usual is impressive. I wonder how they manage it. Maybe I spend too much time alone. Maybe I read the wrong news stories. Maybe I’m too negative. What’s their secret?
Once I quit asking why, once I calm down and quit ranting about their overindulgence and lack of awareness, I soon realize what’s going on. Nobody knows what to do.
Nobody.
We’re all pretending to some degree and our daily rituals and habits keep us from losing it altogether. Because deep down inside even the most hardcore climate denier, even the most toxically positive believer in the faithfulness of the universe to deliver what they need, even the most devout, and even the most militant anti vaxxer know that life will never go back to what it was before.
We’re experiencing change and it’s the kind of change that gets quick results, organic change.
This isn’t anything like the slow evolution of change which is orchestrated by decades of human activism. Nor is it the kind of change that is brought about through research, development, and creative inventions. Those kinds of changes take at best twenty-five to thirty years from the introduction of the idea to the final normalization of the idea. A woman’s right to vote, organic food being sold in mainstream markets, seatbelt laws, computers, and AI belong on a long list of social and technological changes. Everything on that list represents change that took time, blood, sweat, and tears to finally become part of our every day lives.
Oh, no, this isn’t that.
This abrupt and violent change was more like a volcano erupting or an earthquake. It hit unannounced, swift, and hard and left us stunned. And, because everything is interconnected— the roads are connected to the salad kits and the vaccines are connected to the work force and the jobs are connected to the mortgages and the war is connected to everything, we’re witnessing the domino effect. You know about the domino effect? Right? One lone domino is toppled and one by one all of the dominoes fall.
That’s this. That’s now.
Ok, I’ll stop here. After all, I don’t have a magic crystal ball that predicts the future. So, whatever I might say from here on out would only be an educated guess based on history lessons and human psychology.
The fact that we’re walking around like zombies doing what we’ve always done, eating a hamburger at MacDonalds, shopping, filling our cars with gas, watching TV, dating, hoping to find love, having babies, all the things that make us feel normal, is probably the only thing that IS normal. This is predictable human behavior.
When we don’t have any dependable solutions, this is all we can do for the moment.
And, we don’t know when or even IF life will return to what we once had. The big IF is what haunts us the most. Because IF it doesn’t return to what was before then what will the new normal look like. Will it be better or worse?
That’s the question that keeps showing it’s ugly mug whenever we try to enjoy a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Isn’t it?
Teresa Roberts is a retired educator, author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
