By now, more than half of this year has been disrupted by a pandemic I purposely chose not to write about… until now.
I did not want to add one more voice to the collective cry of helplessness the world over.
Never has the saying, “Misery loves company” been more true than today, when the news — and our news feeds — are bombarded with bad news after bad news.
On my part, I was as exhausted hearing about the unending stream of bad news as I was with the unfounded optimism of certain people.
It’s complicated, and most days, I avoid both extremes by retreating in my own company, where I can lose myself in books.
Last night, one of the main characters in the 12-part series I am reading really spoke to me when he said, “You can’t just be reading books all the time and leave the writing of them to others.”
Well, I’m not here to write a book.
I’m simply here to put my thoughts to writing, which now seems a lot harder to do, because for the past 8 months or so, I’ve been living one day after another with very minimal thinking about the future.
(I hadn’t intended to sound so bleak, but I sound bleaker by the second.)
Anyway, a video struck me today, and at risk of sounding like I’m promoting somebody for money (which I’m not), I will not mention his name.
Suffice it to say that he released a video about a possible COVID-19 vaccine now in Phase 3, which could very well mean that we’re closer to… normalcy.
That we should be excited to return to the “old” normal, as opposed to the so-called “new” normal we are living in.
Who would’ve guessed that in the year 2020, despite mankind’s relatively greater and far more exciting achevements and breakthroughs in recent years, our collective excitement would revolve around a Vaccine for Normalcy?
This is possibly the greatest irony of all.
This is what we’ve become when we are reminded that none of our achievements since the dawn of civilization mean anything, if we can’t even survive a virus so small it’s invisible to the naked eye.
For most people, this is a tragedy, because they’ve built their lives in a delusion of security and near-invincibility.
To them, this pandemic has been a slap in the face, a bucket of ice cold water, a reality check that they are just like everyone else.
For others, there is still goodness that can be salvaged from this tragedy.
It’s a humbling experience.
Yes, we are all just like everyone else, and that’s not necessarily a “bad” thing.
Suddenly, it’s a whole lot easier to deny ourselves things which many people are deprived of.
It opens a room for self-reflection, thoughtfulness, and a sense of responsibility to others.
This is not unfounded optimism, it’s the ability to see things from a different perspective.
A few days ago, a string of tragedies unfolded across Lebanon, India and it even hit close to home, in Ajman in the UAE.
It drew out so-called prophets of doom heralding the apocalypse as we know it, but dig deeper, and you’ll find that behind each tragedy are stories of humanity at its finest.
When we finally do find the Vaccine for Normalcy, let’s do ourselves and the future generations a favor by not diluting it into an opioid that lulls us back to a sense of false security.