With the one-year anniversary of the pandemic being declared, it is time to reflect on the changes and losses of the past year. The photo of the sunrise above is one I took on March 11, 2020. Little did we know that our lives would be changing in ways in the next year that would profoundly change us. Sheltering in place and social distancing were unknown concepts a year ago. Living more of your life online meant virtual meetings on Zoom or some other platform and ordering from Amazon rather than going to a store. Such regular occurrences as meeting friends at a restaurant became a memory. Wearing a mask and avoiding getting too close to passing people made the world seem like a threat to our personal safety.
How we come out of this experience as changed people remains to be seen. Will we resume our normal previous patterns and look at the past year as an exception or will we become different people for good and bad. Will the changes the world has gone through in the past year make the countries of the world more willing to work together to tackle common problems or become more nationalistic and protective of their internal needs? Will our experience with delaying addressing a pandemic mean we have a new recognition of the need to address the threat of climate change? Will democracies thrive in our new reality or will countries move to more authoritarian models. That is a reality we see being played out currently in our country. We can see signs in both directions.
We are about to move into a world post-pandemic that will be very different than pre-pandemic. Will it be like the "roaring 20's" after the1918 pandemic or a time of turbulence in the world like the 1930s that led to the Second World War or a little of both? Stay tuned it should be an interesting time.
P.S.
One negative change today is that gas is not as cheap as it was a year ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment