"We are stuck with this new 'thing' some call reality. How is this going to end? This dual curse of pandemic and social unrest? Your guess is as good as mine. But failure is not an option. We must go on. We must heal. We have no choice."
One of the internet games I play has kind of a neat feature. If you go on a losing streak, and your fortune starts to evaporate, a message appears on the screen. "Want to go back in time? For $7, your balance of {whatever} can be restored." Then if you want, you can pay the seven bucks, and be back in the dough again until your next losing streak.
Back in time. Sounds pretty good these days. Yesterday was the first of June. This year of 2020 is now five months old. Think of what you were doing five months ago on New Year's Day. What your thoughts were. Your plans. I know what mine were. My wife and I were getting ready for our grandson's birthday, and then leaving town. We were going to visit her cousin in Kansas, her brother in Florida, and then some friends further south in Florida. We were going to get our Global Traveler pass in Alabama (for our upcoming cruise to Europe), and then relax in our Florida condo until early March. 2020 was going to be a great year!
Then the speed bumps started to appear. While in Florida, I got sick with something. It turned into pneumonia. It (along with skunky weather) caused our trip to be cut short by a week. On the way home, my wife was not feeling well. Turns out she had bronchitis. In any event, we barely make it home, and then started hearing about this Chinese virus which had infected so many in Washington state. Little did we know that the "normal" in our year had just left the building.
The rest is all history, which is common to us all. Pandemic, followed by supply chain issues for needed items, social distancing and all the crap that came with it. Our cruise was cancelled due to the pandemic. Then out of the blue, after a very pleasant (yet weird, due to the virus) Memorial Day weekend, came the unexpected. The George Floyd issue in Minneapolis. Out of this most unique year, of now having to live with this Chinese virus, came some of the worst civil unrest most of us could ever remember. And that brings us to today.
Five months. We have gone from la-la land, the sky is blue land, to back-to-back crisis' which has taken this great nation to the brink. It is getting increasing harder for many of us to remember what our "normal" was these days. Can't dine indoors at a restaurant, need an appointment to get a routine haircut, still can't find some items at the store, sports is still at a stand still, and most church services are only online.
In addition, most major cities in the country have been through some kind of social upheaval. Many now have new areas of burned out or trashed buildings, which are the building blocks of blight. We have roving gangs of youth, Antifa, BLM, socialists - you name it - going from city to city to cause havoc. Guns and ammo have been flying off the store shelves, and it is just a matter of time before our cold civil war becomes hot and bloody.
Do I want the clock turned back five months? As Steve Austin would say, "Oh, hell, ya!" But as much as most of us would like to, we can't go back in time. We are stuck with this new "thing", some call reality. How is this going to end? This dual curse of pandemic and social unrest? Your guess is as good as mine. But failure is not an option. We must go on. We must heal. We have no choice.
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