Of COVID? We’re not.
In fact, the most common reasons given to get the jab is “travel, work, shopping, not be shunned”. The most common reasons given to wear a mask is “I’m a good person, I’m not selfish, I’m not a grandma killer”. The most common reason given for vaccine passport is “I don’t want to be a second class citizen”. Where’s the virus in all that? Nowhere to be found. In fact, the virus has become a distant second to all of it. Now we’re just worried about our job, as many are threatened with being fired for not getting the jab. The virus, the pandemic, the cases and the deaths, has become a droning background environment for the rest, as if there was still a need for it but only insofar to make the rest make sense. If the virus, the pandemic, the cases and the deaths, went away, there would be no rationale for anything we do to that end. It would be pure insanity, and we’re acutely aware of that. This makes us not afraid of the virus, it makes us afraid that the virus disappears.
Dread washes over us as we contemplate the moment the virus and the pandemic and the cases and the deaths all goes away for good. As we contemplate our life after the virus. As we contemplate a return to the mundane. We dread the mundane. We have no raison d’être in there. The virus, the pandemic, the cases and the deaths, that is our raison d’être. Without that, our life is meaningless. Bullshit jobs. No purpose, no higher purpose. No goal, no plan, no dream.
Well, let me tell you about the other side of that story. Many of us, many had a goal, a plan, a dream. We were working toward it, for it, putting in the time and the effort. For some it was the mundane “clean your room”, while for others it was the grandiose “repair this broken world”, and for everybody in-between it was a meaningful worthwhile endeavor. Get a degree, get a job, fix the house, build a house, fix the roads and build them, work the land and feed the chickens, run a grocery shop, a restaurant, a movie theater and an iceskating rink, fix people and heal them and treat them and cure them and make them well, drive a truck and transport goods to and fro from where it’s made to where it’s needed, drive a bus and carry people to where they need to go, assemble and speak of all things important and mundane, plead to shops and food makers to give generously and then give this food to the hungry and the destitute, preach and worship as we dress our best and behave our best and in these rites and rituals and ceremonies strengthen our group, celebrate the birth and mourn the death, go to the pub and meet our friends and neighbours and strangers alike, as we hold a vigil a wake for one of ours, a father perhaps a mother, one of our own, go to the park and play, have a picnic, catch a fish and hunt game, restore an old car and customize a new one just the way we want it, fix shoes and make shoes, fix suits and make suits and pants and fit them, paint a landscape and shape the clay into a face or a frog.
All of these plans, shot to hell, thrown away, destroyed and dismissed as unimportant, as meaningless, as worthless in the face of a virus, of a pandemic, all in the name of the greater good. All of our plans, all of our goals, all of our dreams have been declared non grata sine die.
I reject. I refuse. I oppose.
Every one of our plans, every one of our goals, every one of our dreams is important to somebody.
That is the other side of that story.
Martin Levac 19:27 10/1/2021
