Muddling - April 3 2021

Muddling

April 3 2021

 

I am writing this

as we enter the second year

of a viral pandemic,

one we were all so sure

would already have ended.

 

A big event,

reminding us

that history is always happening

even now.

That our lives are not exempt

from contingency and luck,

from the actions of flawed men

and our own ineffectiveness;

the illusion of control

we were deluded we had.

 

Reminding us

that no matter what

we are able to adjust,

whatever it takes to survive.

Dispensing with hugs

and muddling through discomfort,

struggling, as we've always done

with inner demons

outer trials.

The “new normal”

of fearful and bored

anxious and humbled.

 

And we have also been reminded

that the last big flu

of the early 20^th century

was hardly remembered at all,

rarely referenced

and with few memorials

and not much mentioned in books.

A mere footnote

despite the toll of death and suffering.

 

Perhaps because it fell

before a great Depression

and between two World Wars.

Or because people were more stoic, then

did not feel so entitled,

shrugging off adversity

resigned that life was hard.

 

And finally, reminded

that this, too, will end

as all things eventually do.

That life goes on

and then does not

and we muddle doggedly through.

 

I am writing this in spring of 2021. While the original traces of this pandemic date back as far as November of 2019; the first cluster of cases were recognized in December of that year; and its spread became regionally exponential in January 2020, in Wuhan China. It got a foothold on this continent a month later (probably, as it turns out, from Europe, not China); spread slowly, then fast; and by March of last year the rotating lockdowns began. So we are well into the second year. Yet until now, I've never written about this.

Perhaps this illustrates how history goes unnoticed, even though we're always and unavoidably living it:  our day-to-day lives go on much as before, and any adjustments tend to be small and incremental. So, like the mythical frog in lukewarm water where the temperature is gradually raised to boiling, we don't notice until it's too late.

We are also highly adaptable. Which is a two-edged sword:  it allows us to survive just about anything; but it also can make us complacent, coming to accept changes that should by all rights be unacceptable.