When People Aren't People

March 18, 2020

Three workdays in. Some tension. Worry about their education and falling behind. Sight words at night. Math during the day. Reading. Won’t reading be key? But their friends and friendships, what will happen? What happens to kids that spend so much time with only their parents? 

AMERICA SHUTS DOWN

The connectedness will get to you. You will come to realize, in the worst way, how everything is connected. You will come to realize, with bittersweetness, just how much people matter. People that do things you’ve never thought of doing yourself, or anyone doing for that matter. They call it supply chains but this is metaphor. People, not chains. People supply us with the things we want and the things we need. People connect connect connect. 

What of the kids’ baseball and soccer and swimming? What of their bodies and their physical development? What of the joy of learning how to chuck a baseball and zip it around the infield. What of sports comradery? Sports connects kids? School connects kids? They’ll connect...but as Steven Pinker reminds us, kids don’t succeed with their parents, they succeed with their peers. Peers aren’t around. We might see them on a walk but...must...social...distance.

Aren’t we realizing right about now just how fluid normal is? In mere days we’ve radically altered our concept of normal. And with prognostications spreading (like the virus) into July or maybe August, once dubbed abnormal will morph into normal. 

HUMAN VACCINE TESTED

When? For how long must we “hunker down” and social distance? For how long do we have to fight the virus by fighting the fact that we are social creatures? We most assuredly are social creatures. That is what this is about. We travel all around this globe now, to essentially people watch. We take planes, trains, and automobiles to watch people, eat their food, listen to them, learn from them, and it has all helped us be able to do it so incredibly quickly. One can be across the pond in hours. Hours. One can get to the equator in hours. Travel...to be social. And don’t we just love to bring back souvenirs? Or it would be impolite not to bring a little something when visiting; after all, they’re such gracious hosts. 

Cruel and unusual this virus, one that forces people to not be people. And when people aren’t people for a certain period of time, they become animals.