THREE YEAR REVIEW
December 21, 2022
Today is the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere and seems like a perfect time to start thinking about what’s happened since December 21, 2019.
It doesn’t seem possible that we’ve lived through 3 years (3 years!) of uncertainty and difficult challenges, and the worst of it is that it’s still not over. However, we’re getting used to the stress and uncertaintly and there’s a certain “let the chips fall where they may” attitude in the air. People ditch their “Covid” masks, plan gatherings, attend concerts, meet with friends, and most seem to take the ensuing Covid19 infections in their stride. Who doesn’t know someone who’s had Covid, in spite of being vaccinated? Do the vaccinations make a difference? I guess they do in many cases, but certainly not all. Several members of my family had had covid after having had all the vaccinations and boosters, so…
Some people were so scared that they refused to believe that any of it was true. They shut down their reasoning skills and looked for another possibility for what was happening no matter how far fetched.
Recently I watched a man on an interview show explain why the earth is flat, that Antarctica surrounds the planet like the rim of a disk, and that Australia doesn’t exist. So I guess from there it’s easy to think Covid19 wasn’t real and that there was a global conspiracy to force people into poisonous vaccines and unnecessary masking. At the same time many of the same people blamed China for deliberately unleashing a deadly disease on us all, which I think is called cognitive dissonance.
The other part of the equation — the challenges we all had to face— was the parting of the ways with friends and relatives over differing opinions. People disagreed — sometimes violently (e.g. the convoys) — with how the challenges were being met about the pandemic, the economy, the government handling of certain issues, and so on. These differences have always been there, but we didn’t talk about them. Now people felt emboldened to check with people about their stance on all the rules, and other people felt empowered to share their opinions willy nilly. Have we always been this contentious?
So what did I learn?Like everyone else, I reflect on the last 3 years and assess my own response, and I have to admit that it didn’t affect me very much. In fact something positive came out of it in that I developed an online teaching operation and met virtually with quite a few people every week. This was something new for me, so it was stimulating, sometimes exciting, sometimes fun. Many people feel the need for personal, face-to-face contact to feel socially connected, but I’m not one of them, so online communication is fine for my introverted nature. I really felt sorry for the extraverted group who thrive on the personal touch. I had a couple of friends in this group, so we met outside for walks in the fresh air.
We weren’t the only ones. Suddenly there were scores of people in my neighbourhood I was seeing for the first time as they walked around the blocks with friends and neighbours. That was fun! I got to talk for a couple of minutes with some lovely folks I didn’t even know lived 5 doors down from me, for example. It was nice to see the neighbourhood so alive and bustling. Now it’s back to empty streets again. Sigh. I wish we could become a more outdoor neighbourhood without needing a pandemic.
Another plus was the money saved. Not going out, not mall strolling, not relying solely on physically going out shopping, saved me quite a bit of money. I got a bit weird there and started testing myself to see how long I could go without grocery shopping (except for milk), how much I could live without, and how much I could rent or borrow without having to buy everything I need. Turns out that I couldn’t resist grocery shopping for more than a week (there might be something on sale!), but that I could order books from the library instead of buying them, and borrow items of clothing for special occasions, and just do without a new spatula. Not only could I cut back drastically, but found out how much I could live without. I’ve become so bad about being reluctant to buy stuff that I’m now cutting my used old clothing into strips to use for gardening ties, and various other uses around the house. If I’m not careful I’ll be back to living as it I were in fifties England! I draw the line at saving my own dripping though. That’s a bridge too far.
So what to make of it all? Obviously many people suffered financial and business losses, had serious health issues, and did not do well at all over the past three years. I am sincerely sorry for them and hope we can, as a community and a country, help to repair some of the damage for them. But for my own experience, I think overall that I have no complaints. The forced alone time was actually restorative and I’m not going back to the former outward-looking life I used to lead; at least not wholly. More reflection is never a bad thing.
