Time For A Change

"We spend our lives learning many things, only to discover (again and again) that most of what we learned is either Wrong or Irrelevant. A big part of our mind can handle this; a smaller, deeper part cannot. And it is this smaller part that matters more, because that part of our mind is who we really are, (whether we like it or not)"

But What If We’re Wrong -   Chuck Klosterman

   Covid 19 has forced a reckoning on most everyone in the world whether they are admitting it or not. Nothing is going to be like it was, for a very long time. And if the truth be told (a scarce commodity in the present environment), things may never be the same again. The time has come for a reassessment of almost everything. How we live, what’s important, and what we should be striving for both as a person, and on a grander scale, as a species. Suddenly we have had to stop what has been routine for the past seventy five years. Most of us, if we even thought about it at all, have just been accepting the idea that the direction we were travelling in was the direction we should be travelling in. We’ve been walking along with our heads down, only looking up at loud noises. And it has led us here, trapped in our houses, fearful of our neighbours, having to wear a mask just to go shopping, and trusting our very existence to people that, if we met them in the local pub, we would laugh out of the room. The question now becomes, do we want to go back to what got us here, when the present crisis is over? Do we want to just sit and wait for the next threat, and the next one?

  But there is an upside. Suddenly we all have our heads up, looking around. And we have time. It’s like we are kids again and we’ve been sent to the corner of the room for a time out. Just enough time to think. Time to assess. Time to question long held beliefs. Time to wonder whether we can do better. Time to wonder if the promised rewards, now that it looks like they won’t be there, were even going to be worth the effort and sacrifice in the first place. How many times, both personally and as a society, have we walked past things that we knew should be changed and done nothing? Well there is no doubt now that changes have to be made, and are going to be made, if we expect to survive at all.

  So what are these changes? I’ll leave that to younger and wiser heads than mine. After all, I’m responsible for the present dilemma. I could have done more and didn’t. Trying to explain why at this late date would just be whining. I swallowed the Kool-Aid with the best of them. I grasp the straw of hoping I did less damage than some, but the effort to stand up for what I knew needed fixing was sadly lacking. And now that I’m old and hiding out in South America like some repentant aging Nazi maybe I’m safe from retribution. I feel sorry for those to whom the burden is falling and I can only hope they are more up to the challenge than I was. If you are one of those, don’t look to the past for any answers. You only have to look at your current leaders in almost every field to realize the futility of that course of action. Perhaps more than at any time in the past they are emblematic of the futility of the old ways of thinking. Literal live embodiments of stupidity and avarice. Fiddling while the world burns. This pandemic is giving you the chance to throw those people and ideas away and head down a new path, look for new solutions. Scary, and exciting at the same time. Because the next fifty years will decide how the story of Us turns out. And you will be its authors. Remember the old saying, "Risk is its own Reward". Don’t be afraid to burn some bridges, in fact burn a lot of bridges. Not being able to go back will keep you going forward. Not much can be worse than what we have now so what have you got to lose? This old geezer will be cheering you on. And I won’t be the only one.