Taking Back Normal
How are you doing since things started getting back to normal? Doesn’t seem we’re quite there yet, but it’s getting closer. Some of us are behaving exactly as in the past, while others are still being cautious. I’m all for regaining what has been lost, but I have to wonder how much we all aged in the process. I feel like I gave up five years for the last two.
Almost all of us had the ability to freely exercise and physically express ourselves cut off in almost every way imaginable. Everything was either closed or so cautious it took all the fun out of it. I lost the chance for aerobic exercise with my basketball group, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to come back. It’s still tough to get together for golf as the circle of interested parties seems to have shrunk. The erratic opening and extended closing of the gyms also left me without my usual tools for staying fit.
All in all, it’s been depressing. It still feels like part of life was taken from me without my permission, and I resent it. I resent that control being taken from me. No one asked, the governments just decided. I don’t think they really knew what they were doing, and I don’t think they were completely honest about the threat. I think in some respect we all lost something, and no one considered the long-term consequences to those of us who are healthy. Most of all, I think it shows how limited our ‘freedom’ is these days. And I wonder, is it because there are too many of us too close together?
That spawns another interesting thought. It seems every 100 years or so some lethal pandemic or disease sweeps through the human species taking significant numbers of us with it. Is this nature’s way of culling the herd, of controlling the runaway growth in our numbers? It makes one wonder.
I’m wondering about a lot of stuff lately. Like back to that thing of too many of us too close together. Must we make concessions to our personal freedom because there are so many of us? Can’t drive ridiculously fast anymore because there’s too much traffic? Can’t make the personal choice to not wear a seatbelt or motorcycle & bicycle helmets because too many of us don’t have insurance and society can’t continue to bear the costs of long-term care? Must we dodge multitudes of banking, selling, buying and financial regulations because we don’t want to bother with being responsible for our own decisions? I get being made aware of the shysters, but at what cost do we protect ourselves in trade for our ability to entertain new opportunities? We lose those things to the wish for security. We want to eliminate risk while enhancing choice. It doesn’t work that way. Eliminating risk and increasing security minimizes choice, freedom, innovation, progress and happiness.
If the reaction to limiting freedom over this pandemic has taught observant people anything, it’s that we need the dynamics of freedom and risk-taking to be happy. Yes, some of the moves to avoid more deaths were prudent. But, for most healthy people, a lot of it was unnecessary and only served to guarantee damage to their once healthy and active lives in very insidious and destructive ways. As an older person, I’m now left wondering if I’ll ever regain the level of strength and fitness I had before the pandemic. Then there’s the even more pervasive toll on mental health due to the loss of social activities and how slow they have been to recover. Pile on this year’s absolutely abysmal Northwest weather, local governments fueling extremist agendas, climbing inflation due to uncontrolled federal spending and the Ukrainian War and there’s a great recipe for a growing sense nothing will return to as it was.
Common sense tells us it must be transitory, but emotionally that’s still a hard apple to swallow. Should we give up and wait it out? Standing on the sidelines doesn’t seem like much fun to me. That’s what got us in this pandemic mess to begin with. I’m going to continue getting out there, doing things, being active and trying to engage people to enjoy it with me. I can’t imagine living any other way, even if it means taking risks. As the old saying goes, “I’ll take my chances.” I hope you see the value of doing that, too.
