Nobody Told Me There’d Be Days Like These

It’s strange. I do not blog for two years and the world goes crazy. I suppose you can blame me for the madness........ “Why don’t you write about what is going on anymore?” I have heard that from several of my friends regarding world events. Well, I tell them when they sober up, I really can’t add to the state of the world with my words and do it justice. It is all there for us to see and feel. The world of these last few years is better than any fiction Hollywood could create. Take the new plague - COVID 19. I have seen movies with the theme of a deadly disease haunting the population, and it looks like camp fun compared with our reality. Tinseltown has heroes and villains that move around in a plot line. You know, the brave man who fights for humanity, slays the evil bureaucrats that want to profit from misfortune, saves the world, and gets the gal in the end - where, they will live happily ever after until the sequel and another disease aimed at the box office dollar. Usually, the savior for the world is played by Tom Cruise, but, if he is out playing Scientologist, Bruce Willis can fill in and be our guardian...... But, as I’ve said, today’s world doesn’t need screenwriters to embellish things. It is all in our lives, a nagging fear not only that we can become sick but that reality has become unreality. A nightmare dream where no matter how much you struggle to wake yourself up, you just can’t. I thought 9/11 was the biggest thing in our lifetime. It sure was ( and, still is, a game changer). However, COVID dwarfs 9/11 by far. When things do, hopefully, calm down, picking up the pieces of the world will also be an eye opener. Examples do not immediately present itself to the mind but we all know things we used to be able to do will not be regular form anymore. I’m talking safety procedures. How we must still practice a reduced way of social distancing and health care....... And, then, there is the work issue. During the pandemic, working from home was the new norm. Most businesses shifted to not having their employees come in and, instead, stay in the comforts and safety of their abodes. This was sound advice, safety practiced and rewarded. But, it also gave a glimpse into the future of the work force and how business will be done. Before COVID, business’s were already fleeing from the office to everyone’s front porch. If you can work from home, do so. We don’t mind. Well, there are good and bad sides to this way of commerce. The good is that with less employees at a traditional business site, the risks of problems and arguments and lawsuits decrease. Economically, it’s cheaper to have less people around. Yes, the bosses know that home bound workers screw around a lot when they should be technically working. But, it is “ out of sight, out of mind”. Plus, on bad weather days, who the hell wants to get in their cars or take the train to come into work. Just stay home, the axiom feeling is, and be comfortable......... Now, the downside of working from home is just as obvious:people are losing their jobs. I’m talking the salesmen and the retail people. The secretaries and the office people. The older worker out of date with modern practices and the teenager looking for their first job. All of these people, plus, many faceless others, are squeezed out by the convenience of having business owners seeing the P & L on their monthly reports and realizing that not seeing John or Betty actually increases their profits. We know that Amazon and few other companies are co-conspirators in this way of doing things. Yes, I know that ordering online is easy and requires no effort from the buyer other than using your fingers. No hassle shopping, no crowds to bug you, you immediately get what you want and it will be there tomorrow. I’ve done it but when I shop online, I do it gingerly and after I have exhausted all of the other options of actually going out into the world and seeking my desires. I’m old-fashioned. I like to support business - especially, when they are small. But, I would never tell anyone what to do. That would be presumptuous. However, a warning I must dangle : be careful what you wish and shop for. You may, one day, find yourself being expendable......... And, this leads me into my job racket. Education. While I am not a teacher, I am Support Staff. I do the Study Halls at the school I work with. It is a good, honest job, with no strings attached when I leave for the day. Good people surround me, both students and staff. Pleasurable to come to work. In the last few years, technology has caught education in its vise and the process of e-learning, home learning, is fast coming up. Again, like regular business, it has its good and bad parts to it. It will be the wave of the future - the future is actually here and breathing heavily - and I wonder if my younger co-workers see the handwriting no longer on the chalkboard but on the virtual wall. I’m 54 and I’m playing out the string until retirement, but, someone coming into education in their twenties and thirties now has to be realistic, I’m hoping. Because, like the Mom-and-Pop store on the corner that Amazon and Walmart just ate up, e-learning will soon make brick-and-mortar schools obsolete. Very soon, the days when having ten or more teachers teaching history will be history. Why have all of them on the payroll when, with home schooling, you only need one or two of them in the department to communicate and educate the students? It will be a mass disappearance of traditional teaching. And, the Support Staff and school security and kitchen and maintenance industries will fall by the wayside also. It will be the proverbial domino effect, a chain reaction. It is already starting. The COVID virus lit the match with home learning being the way things will be done. The toe in the water moment. And, many will have their jobs drown. Not now. I give it within the next ten or fifteen years.......... So, I guess the connecting tissue with all of this must be the COVID virus. Not only health issues but the boomerang echoes. Our collective ears are ringing from this sound. I purposely have stayed away from writing about the divisions and debates that have raged since Day One. In social media, rantings and arguments raged. What the scientists and politicians are doing and the people being pro or con with these actions. Of course, with Free Speech, we all have the right to express our opinions. A healthy and respectable dialogue is always welcome. Still, I have seen the darkest side. Some people, whom I considered rational, acting very irrational. Despite solid evidence supporting a fact, you run into a wall of defiance and a lack of common sense. To each his own. The younger me - a little brasher, definitely thinner - would have taken them on in a spirited debate ( usually, when alcoholic spirits were present). I’ve given up trying to do this. I will argue a viewpoint when asked but I no longer argue with my mouth pressed against an opponent’s ear. Let them believe what they want. One insight I’ve also learned with age is that I have not walked in the other person’s shoes in their walk through life. Whatever ideas they may have - whatever biases, whatever views - they formed through the roads they traveled in this world. They have brought back life’s experiences to form judgments and thoughts that I may not share, but, I must indulge. I just hope those views aren’t warped by bitterness and hate. Those people, whom I do pity, will never see the light of reason in their minds. It will always be a darkened tunnel they live in, a blackness of the soul........ I can be cynical but I am not a cynic. I like to see, as Lincoln famously said, the better angels of our nature. It is there in humans. With many, you have to dig deeply into finding that well of goodness. I do believe in God’s plan. I am not arrogant enough to try to explain that plan. I just believe it firmly. And, I love how God dishes out Karma! Don’t mess with the Almighty! All of these bad recent moments are happening for a reason. Again, I do not pretend to know that reason. I am NOT supposed to know. But, I am firm in my belief that we will get through this and fight another day....... Until that day, I wish you all good luck and, mostly, good health. And, I look for more musings from me, if it interests you. I remain faithfully yours.........Stay Gold, Ponyboy........