Reflections on the Coronavirus (COVID19) Pandemic
March 25, 2020
How tough are you? Oh, not the Harley Davidson, Sylvester Stallone or even Bruce Willis kind of tough. I am writing about how tough you may or may not be when the chips are down. When the job is gone, as so many are today, and the paychecks with it. When the food is gone and the free pantry not really filled or there anymore. Are you tough enough to even bend a knee and go to such a place if your family’s survival is at stake? How tough are you? Can you stay up nights with worry while they sleep because you lied to them that everything was going to be all right? Are you that tough, to be able to take it all on yourself and not distribute the pain around? “When the night has come, and the land is dark…. and that moon is the only thing you see...” are you that tough, to be alone because most of life walks away when the going grows rocky, the money’s gone and human interaction becomes some cold result of a deathly instrument called social distance.?
Can you stand alone? Will you stand with someone, and if you have no one, will you stand by me?
There’s trouble. Trouble is all about, and tomorrow, when it begins to grow into ever more serious and every more deadly trouble, will you have now have to go it alone, a passenger aboard a vessel seemingly and unfalteringly headed for heavy surf and a rocky shore in the distance?
Where are you? Where am I? The walls grow close, the night becomes longer and there’s not even the whisper of any enemy out there to fight. Don’t stand alone. Stand with your those who bend but don’t break around you.
Stand by me, even if you don’t know me.
Ben E. King, 1961
Your Thoughts?
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I had a “come to Jesus” moment Tuesday. I’d gone to HEB for a few items and noticed ground beef, 3 lbs for $9.69. So I picked three of them up and finished my shopping as best I could with memories of photos and video clips from Soviet Russia in the ’50’s and ’60’s running through my head.
At the check out, the clerk told me I could not purchase the three pounds of ground beef, I could only get two – and the cost would be $3.99 each. I lost it. I refused the extraordinarily expensive ground beef while taking the other necessities I’d been able to find.
I was incensed because of the cost of the beef that I’d paid less than $3.00 per pound for just a few weeks before.
I was all the way home and sharing the experience with my wife when the thought finally occurred to me: “That was then and this is now.”
We’re all under a tremendous amount of stress due to many related and unrelated situations we have little or no control over. Not “heat-of-battle” stress but that incessent, gnawing stress that kills just as effectively.
I’ve been reminding myself that, hopefully, “this too shall pass” and life will resume a resemblance of normalcy.
Oorah!
Semper fi!
This is silently happening right here in Lake Geneva. The local Piggly Wiggly has quietly raised prices on meat, tissue, cereal and much much more. It is not
considered grudging because it’s a grocery store I guess. This may be going on all across the nation. Little increases of a buck to two bucks a pound for ground beef and then limits on amounts to be purchased. No wonder everyone is hoarding when the government is talking about this economic halt to last for more than a month and likely on into the summer. What the hell is most of the public supposed to do? There are only three million men and women serving as police officers and military, and half the military (900,000) are out of the country. So, with less than three percent of the U.S. set up to perform civil disturbance actions in the U.S. how is that supposed to work, come the end of April when the winds of change will be howling through the canyon of what used to be my country? And, that’s if you can get the military and police forces to fight their neighbors and friends, if it comes to that. The Leonard Cohen song: Democracy is Coming to the USA.
Semper fi,
Jim
Love the song and the sentiment. If anything about this Pandemic has changed for the good, I am observing more people staying in closer communication.
Our technology can be used effectively. Been using ZOOM to not only chat with more people but share the conversation with video so we cane SEE each other and better understand their situation.
The Free version allows 40 people to mingle for 40 minutes at a time
Great suggestion, Chuck
Semper fi,
Jim