The Great Reminder

 A friendly prompt, to consider a word or phrase to characterize what we--collectively and individually--have experienced, are experiencing here in 2020. I said I would chew over what has been served up by the pandemic and the epidemic that infects our body politic. And so, The Great Reminder.

Spoiler alert--I don't see anything going on any differently from what has been true of the human experience for, oh, 6,000 years or more. To the point, human nature is always a study in human nature. Some folks break things, and some folks fix things. And some folks watch.

Tossing around a term like risk management doesn't change a fact of existence, a human life being unpredictable, ever uncertain. Was that reality ever not so? I saw a report this morning of a poll showing 1 in 3 Americans think a traditional Thanksgiving family gathering is worth the risk of infection. We assess, we make our choices. With the understanding that others may pay for those decisions.

Well, I can't help think of very early seafaring peoples shoving off in their small boats to confront the terrible awesomeness of the oceans to find a new habitable spot. Families in tow, the horizon dividing the knowable from the unknowable.

Needless to say, those of us who have all that we need mostly expect what we need to be readily available. Until it's not. Thus, the mad rush for toilet paper in the face of broken supply chains. The gears of commerce lurching, jobs on hold if not altogether gone, waiting times of 4-6 weeks on, gulp, Amazon. 

Perhaps you have seen estimates of the number of refugees in Europe during and shortly after WWII--a staggering 60 million. Supply chains? Commerce? Jobs? Going without? 

Hasn't the phrase essential workers revealed much about the income levels of workers and the jobs that need to get done to keep our lives rolling along--and those essential millionaires? Hey, millionaires didn't build the pyramids. 

As for the body politic, I'm guilty of a simplistic outlook, simply most people want the world to be what they want it to be. And there is no consensus. So artificially drawing dotted lines around chunks of landmasses--how do you think that will go? Feel free to revisit world history at your leisure. 

I think you already know all of this, but wars, famines, pandemics, earthquakes, hurricanes, fires, greed, ignorance, violence et al shove it in our faces. The human experience is a fragile endeavor, my friends. 

Let us be kind to our kind as we will. Enjoy the holiday season.