December 12, 2021
Gotta keeping moving, people!
We’ve made yet another trip around the sun and another remarkable year draws to a close. And I’m not still quite sure what to make of all that has happened or what we can learn from it. What is Mother Nature trying to tell us? That we went too far in our quest for convenience and comforts? Is the pandemic a punishment for our past sins? Or, is it a harbinger of a dystopian future in which we will only bump fists and never be able to hug? Was the scientific progress of the last 100 years - steam engines, automobiles, industrial revolution, transistors, semiconductors, electronics, genomics, antibiotics, etc etc - all of it - was it all a big mistake? Should we have been less rapacious in using up our planet’s resources? Have we been greedy little monsters? The answers aren’t as obvious as you might think.
Progress is the destiny of the human race. We are wired to find better ways to live and co-exist. We invent, share, exploit, enjoy and suffer. These are the things we do best. We have no choice but to keep doing these things. If we stopped, that would be the end of us. We would stop being human. We have to do these things even if they seem excessive and unnecessary at times. Does the human race really need to be able to create and share millions of cat videos? Probably not. Yes, there is a viable path for us that does not involve sharing feline mp4s with complete strangers. But here’s the thing. We are not always in search of a merely viable path. There’s another part of being human. It is to wonder about why we are here in the first place. These are the most human of all questions - who am I? Who made me? Why am I here? What am I supposed to do? What does it mean to die? Do I get to come back? Does any of this matter? Why am I unhappy? What is the shape of the emptiness in my life? How do I fill it? How do I forget? How do I keep moving on?
We have to keep moving on. We have no choice. We have to keep moving on. It is the only way we know how to block the memories of our blunders. It is how we manage our fears, hopes and grief. We have to keep moving even if it means more blunders. Especially if it means more blunders and more grief.
In January 2020, I was in New York city to meet my best friend. This was a week after China had locked down Wuhan, a mega-cluster of ten million people. I should have known then that something was afoot. But I didn’t. I had absolutely no idea that the world was about to turn on its head in less than a month. We saw extraordinary images from Milan in February. Bodies of people piled up in morgues. Tales of doctors turning away the elderly so they could save the young. Was this a repeat of the Spanish Flu that killed a third of the world at its peak, we asked? I remember the fear and panic. Then, we saw the greatest city in the history of the world’s great cities buckle and lose its nerve. New Yorkers, the most daring of daredevils, fled their city as it ran out of space to bury its dead. By May, we had capitulated. If the New Yorkers couldn’t handle it, what hope did the rest of us have? We were on our knees, praying. I will always remember June of 2020. We had just seen New York pummeled. Our business had fallen off the edge of the cliff. Revenue dropped 40% practically overnight. We laid off ten percent of our people. I honestly did not think that we were going to make it out in one piece. We were clearly headed for hell in a handbasket.
Things could have gone any number of ways since June 2020. It could have well been a Spanish Flu repeat and killed a third of the world. But it wasn’t. Without doubt, every life lost to Covid 19 is a tragedy of enormous proportion. I don’t mean to downplay the loss of so many lives. But, as things turned out, Covid-19 was NOT the Spanish Flu and we dodged a massive bullet. This needs to be broadcast from the rooftops. How did this happen? Is there someone looking out for us? Or, was it yet another random stroke of luck which human history is peppered with? Who knows. But, we got out of it largely in one piece.
By March 2021, we had vaccines. As of today, most in the West are inoculated and booster doses are starting. There’s more work to be done in India, Brazil, and Africa on vaccinating more people. The good news is they are all getting there. We are in an incredibly good place now considering what it looked like in June 2020. THIS IS THE HEADLINE. That we are okay. That we will be okay. That we are in a good place. That we can go back to doing things. This is the news. Not Delta or Omicron.
I don’t want to jinx things by calling it yet. But it does look like we have dodged the asteroid sized bullet. It’s now time to go back to being as normal, whatever that means going forward. Maybe it means wearing a mask in indoor public spaces for the rest of our lives. Maybe it means getting an annual booster for the next two or three years. Maybe it means we get to go back to the office only a few times a month. Maybe it means we have to pay more attention to our diets and exercise regularly so the next time a pandemic comes along, we are not one of those deemed vulnerable to it? There is a new normal emerging and sure it doesn’t seem so normal yet. But, the sooner we accept and embrace these new ways of doing things, the better off we will be.
We are the human race. We can’t sit still for too long. We must not sit still for too long. It is not who we are. We have to be out there doing things, making mistakes and learning new things, delta or omicron. Get boosted. Get your mask on. Get out there. There’s a big and beautiful world out there waiting to be seen.
Stay safe and have a great week ahead.