APRIL 16, 2020 – As the world struggles with The Virus, we’re learning that the spread of an invisible, highly contagious pathogen is as big a threat to humans as humans are to humans.
But this attention-grabbing contagion is doing lots more than making people sick. It’s revealing in stark fashion many of the flaws and failures of our social, education, political, and economic systems and policies. And, of course, it’s exposing from empty head to ugly toe, the complete nakedness of the man who would be emperor and the vacuity of his crass, classless heirs to the sty.
Concurrently, The Virus is exposing some positively exceptionally aspects of American life, and that’s where the rest of this post is heading.
For one, we’re learning to adapt, innovate, and roll with the punches. From DIY facial masks to jerry-rigged ventilators, good ol’ fashion American ingenuity is as robust as ever. Instacart, the Über of grocery shopping, has found its way onto public byways, and Zoom is showing us how to meet and greet a crowd without having to meet and greet a crowd. In places like my home state of Minnesota, we’re learning how quality, fact-based, data-driven, science-sentient, law-respecting, economics-savvy political leadership can navigate confidently and competently through uncharted, fog-covered waters.
Some of us are re-discovering old classics—in my case, Robinson Crusoe, and Beethoven’s Seventh in the hands of the Berlin Philharmoniker, or better yet, old episodes of The Jetson’s and YouTube documentaries about World War II vintage aircraft and their courageous pilots.
There are the deep breathing exercises I discovered online, the addition of push-ups to my daily exercise regimen, and the walks late at night under the starlit sky, in which Venus never looked so close and stunningly beautiful.
There are client conundrums for which the usual remedies are unavailable, thus requiring unusual approaches (Back full circle to American ingenuity!)
And then there’s the “great reveal” of the Great Virus of 2020: household pets. We’re realizing it’s not a dog-eat-dog world after all. It’s a dogs-walk-people world, while indoors, cats rule simply by sprawl-snoozing across the seat of your favorite chair (just when you want to view your favorite new Netflix series).
As lowly commoners inside our own cat-ruled home, my wife and I get scolded each morning by our LOUD, old, scraggly cat. However pleasant our greeting is to her, she shout-meows in reply, “What took you so long?! I’ve been up since five, waiting for you lazy slugs to fill my bowl—and not with that awful flake poultry stuff you tried to impose on me yesterday but the grilled salmon paté you should have stocked up on before it ran short! Now that you finally got yourselves out of bed, do your job, damnit!”
I’m ever the optimist as I open a new can and delicately place a serving of paté in the center of her majesty’s bowl: I keep hoping against hope that she’ll favor me with a pleasant, “Thank you, my loyal, obedient subject.”
There’s always tomorrow.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
