How One Man Is Dealing With Six Months Of Pandemic
Hello world, Anthony here. We at Family Power Music have incorporated a blog into our website. This is my first entry. I thought I’d start with the Pandemic, seeing as how it is the phenomenon that has touched the lives of almost everyone around the world in some way. World culture has shifted dramatically in 2020. My whole life, I had looked forward to this year as a benchmark for eschewing in, “The Future”. As a child I had dreams of 2020 holding such awesome things for us in store as flying cars and hover-boards, you know, the stuff of ‘Back to the Future 2’. What we have ended up with is a global pandemic, and a highly polarized society along political and/or religious lines, more or less depending on your coordinates.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t make concession and count the blessings. 2020, compared to say, 1920, or, 1820, or 1720, or even 1620 and so on, has its advancements that indicate we are living far in the future, as juxtaposed to those eras. Technology has advanced exponentially, the effects of which are readily observable in almost every area of our lives, mostly for good. There is a saying, “The more things change..”, and, I may offer despite all this wonderful tech and the benefits it has brought, including the ushering of us into a new era, there are some issues we as a civilized society still grapple with.
Ever present in our macro and micro cultures all across the globe, major conflict remains ever present along religious, political, philosophical, ideological, moral and ethical lines. In 2020, born citizens in the United States are STILL not considered an ethnic group. Nor, being the construct of race to classify human phenotypes still holds water, are U.S. born considered our own race of people. Not sure how many generations must go by before this changes, but so far, we are quite a few generations into being our own distinct culture and society of people, and this issue remains unresolved. As a result, when one takes a look around in America, much conflict may be observed as a result of the perpetuation of this problem. Now rather than continuing into the rabbit hole of my masters thesis, I will digress from that subject.
The COVID has turned our society upside down. Perhaps we all are quite fatigued form enduring the changes that have occurred as a result of this Pandemic. I have quite the life full of responsibility and obligations, family and friends, projects, interests, self care, just like many of us. This Pandemic has disrupted my ability to function and enjoy life enormously. After six months of this, including carrying the virus myself and going through that, I am praying harder than ever this pandemic run it’s course, and pass into the history books.
Some say it will be with us forever and our culture is forever changed and this is the new normal. I do not believe this to be so. Removing the hyperbolic nature of the spirit of those statements, we must remember we are in a pandemic, and it will pass. My Cousin reminded me that the benchmark where things will begin to return to normal is when cases recede below pandemic levels. It was comforting to be reminded of this. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and we will get through this. We are not on some Sisyphusian hamster wheel of new normal the definition of which is social distancing and masks forever, etc. We are in a pandemic, and this will pass. Sending the light, prayers and love to all of us that we have the strength, grace and fortitude to carry on through the remainder of this time, until that miraculous moment comes when we may give great big hugs to loved ones again when we see them.