Like for each of you, this pandemic has stressed me the heck out.
There are health concerns for my loved ones, and myself, of course.
[Is it time to take our temperatures again?]
There are also the daunting financial repercussions to worry about.
Though media is considered an essential service, several co-workers have been laid off at The Chief due to a decline in ad revenue. (You can help keep the news coming at support.squamishchief.com).
Being the last ones working means new duties, more work, and survivor guilt.
My film-industry husband has been laid off. Who knows when film crews will be allowed back on set — and actors kissing and fighting will be OK again?
Our sons are each navigating an uncertain job or school future, and one of them moved home.
(Ack! He keeps trying to get me to eat kale and consume edibles!)
A good friend died of cancer March 9, and his celebration of life was postponed, leaving his family and friends in a suspended state of grief.
Through all this, the words of wisdom of two men have been ringing in my ears.
During a pre-COVID interview about youth adapting to a world of ever-changing technology, Quest professor Doug Munroe said (and I am paraphrasing here) that the thing he most wants for his students is that they acknowledge they don’t know stuff and have the curiosity to learn.
My generation and those before it learned that admitting you didn’t know was a sign of weakness.
Thus, we all have that relative who, no matter what you talk about, they know more about it.
“I am going to the Moon with my dog, Jupiter,” you might say.
“Well, let me tell you,” our relative begins.
This pandemic is something none of us have experienced. We are learning to be patient and sit in our not knowing many things — if this virus will strike us or when and how this will all end.
This not knowing keeps us curious and humble, two things we could use a lot more of on the other side of this strange time.
Also, I am thinking of Isaac Newton’s laws of motion: that everything in a state of uniform motion will remain in that state of motion unless an external force acts on it.
Before COVID, we each had our ideas of how Squamish was and could be.
And yet, here we are in this strange new world.
It is perhaps a silver lining that our ideas of what is possible — what we, our governments and our families are capable of — have been shaken, and hopefully, our imaginations stirred.
What will happen next? Don’t ask me. I have no idea.
And I am trying to be OK with that.
