We, all or most of us, are complaining. We are aggrieved. We have to stay indoors.We shop at our own risk. We cannot find daily items, once always available but not now. We whine when doctors close up offices, make new rules, go telehealth, confusing, just strange. Those who venture outside see ghost towns in capitals of the world. Stores are shut down tight, business being done via online sites and delivery sites- maybe - and concerts have taken on new venues as artists sing in courtyards, on the streets, amplifying voices and joined by people standing at windows, at doors, on patios and porches, all singing and moving to the rhythm.
Our kids are learning on screens, with Zoom becoming a houshold word. Our libraries are shut and books are a precious commodity. Even games are running short as popular ones are out of stock. We wonder about all those masked and gloved people we see in the markets or running in the empty streets.
Most of all we wonder and whine: when will we ever get back to normal? When can life be as it was? Why, in the modern world when we send people into space, have them walk around, float, why then can we not fight a virus, one which we knew was comng, one which we had researched before but shut it down? Why were we so unprepared for this and how the hell will we ever pull ourelves, the entire world, out of its mammoth economic disaster, shaping up to be a Great Depression with longer times of survival than ever before.It took a good decade to recover from 2008 so imagine this timeline!
One of the most plaintive complaints is the one of families, used to celebrate the upcoming holidays together, as huge family groups, or in hotels, with others. Now, we are alone, some truly alone, the lone person sitting at a table reading a Haggadah for Passover and the seder meal. Families cannot go to church together or even to services at all. Danger ahead! And all security is washed away in the cascades of the falling stock markets and people wonder how we will survive, surmount, these difficulties.
Full disclosure:I am one of those who wonder, who are afraid and question if we will ever get back to at least a modicum of normal life. I wonder and worry as to how we will survive as our retirement funds disappear down a black hole of finance, and how can we then help our kids as they lose jobs or hours and salaries are cut, as expenses pile up? We worry and fret. We obsess and think this is just awful - and it is - and these multiplying numbers are frightening, the predictions of victims and the dead are hair raising, mindboggling,world changing, with no end in sight. Worse, we have no national leader at this point, but rather one who lies and changes narratives from minute to minute within the same speech and then descends to the usual bully behavior, calling people names, denigrating hard pressed health professionals and institutions and is worse than useless.
Then today it all came into perspective. I realized that all is relative for no matter how bad it gets, no matter how terrible it gets, the depths it reaches, there are worse situations and there is always hope, even in the darkest hours. Why did I feel this way? Where did I scent a whiff of hope?
A friend sent a small blurry, black and white video of a Passover Seder inVienna, in 1947. Two years after more than a decade of horror, of torture, of mechanized genocide calculated to totally wipe out an entire nation. Millions were killed, tortured, died of beatings, starvation, illness, hangings, drownings, medical experiments, men, women, children, even the aged and the newborns did not escape this madness. Yet two years later after living in a world of depravity beyond all comprehension, when families were ripped apart, when sons were killed in front of mothers, and daughters in front of fathers, when humans were burned as so much offal, when it seemed as if there would never be an end to this other than death - two years later there is a seder. Children had been born. Children were found where they had been hidden. People healed their physical wounds, attempted to deal with their traumas to souls and minds, and once again had faith, faith after a time in which it seemed G-d had turned a deaf ear to His creations, disgusted with them, despairing of and with them.
Thus it depends on one's perspective and the relativity of situations. Yes, it is hard not being with family. Yes, it is hard not socializing with friends. Yes, it is hard having to accept certain rationings and limitations. But how much worse it was, for Armenians chased and massacred by Turks, for Tutsis killed by Hutus, for Cambodia to be ravaged by their own people, for Rohingya to be purged to the verge of extinction . For Jews to have been persecuted through the millenia and to face today, once again, accusations of Jews causing the pandemic, of Israel profiting from it - this even as people die there as well as elsewhere.
Having other people in horrific situations does not make one feel better, but we know that we will, for the most part, survive, though many will die. We will be able to reunite with family and friends, not tramp over their graves as bones and ashes still rise to the surface in the camps and killing grounds of the world.
Think about this. Put things in perspective.
In the meanwhile, be well. Be safe. Always.
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