Looking back, not too very long ago, the word COVID wasn’t even in our vocabulary. Now it is a common word that is known worldwide. This disease, be it 19, Delta, or Omicron sadly seems to be our new normal. Yet why are we surprised? In a world with billions of people, is it so far fetched to believe that a contagion like COVID can be such a serious threat to mankind?
The world has been plagued by Plagues like this
If we look back at the history of pandemics from the Black Plaque to the Spanish Flu, none of this is a surprise or a historical anomaly. In fact, it may have arrived just like clockwork. Perhaps it is not the pandemic and disease itself that is the issue, but our concept that everything should go as planned according to our minds – our normal – just because it has for so long and we were comfortable.
I recall hearing about the Spanish Flu as an adult in college. I don’t recall ever learning about it in High School, and I most definitely don’t recall anyone talking about it – despite realizing that my great grandmother and grandmother were alive during it. Perhaps they didn’t think that it was a big deal or that it would happen again. But it did happen again and there were valuable lessons that could have been learned early on.
So how do we survive?
Mainly, how exactly do we survive – literally and figureatively. Obviously, immunizations are crucial for our literal survival. However, is there not another smallpox, another bubonic plaque lurking a century away? In a world of billions, of people, germs and mutations – how can there not be?
So what are we to learn from living in a new normal, where everything that once seemed odd or strange, is now our reality. And, what will will tell the next generation.
Lessons from our Pandemic
So here we are living in the COVID pandemic , where everyone masks up and the custom of shaking hands has long gone. We have been navigating this new normal for over a year now and our new normal has become just that – normal.
But it has to if we are to be a resilient species that survives.
Perhaps that is the lesson of survival – we adapt, we become resilient, we somehow survive and overcome the odds. Hasn’t this being going on since the beginning of time? So what exactly is there to tell?
