AFTER A YEAR OF COVID, WHAT DOES JOY FEEL LIKE?
IT’S been a long year. Longer than usual in terms of how long it feels, and how joylessly the daily death reports have weighted on my heart. More so, given that I can now say that I personally know of five friends who have contracted COVID and had to be hospitalized, three of whom never left the hospital. That’s a lot higher a death rate than reported, and all but two were surprisingly young. Too young, having never had the time to experience life as it should be experienced.
Now that those who want to be immunized are finally getting vaccinated, what, two weeks after the second dose, does joy feel like in the “new normal” world?
Well, first a caveat. If you still don’t consider mask wearing, voluntary distancing and frequent hand washing “normal,” then maybe this question is premature. Maybe. On the other hand, I’ve never in the past gone a whole year without even a cold. Maybe that’s one silver lining to our resurrected public health, long ignored in the USA. Maybe that’s something to be joyous about. I think it is.
But I’m referring here to something more: What it feels like to accept the “new normal,” whatever it is going to be, and simply get on with life, joy being at the very heart of it all. Getting out and about, for instance. Even masked, distanced and frequently-hand-washed, it’s a joy to be able to walk outside and re-experience nature and our world once again.
I think of COVID as the heterosexual version of HIV. LIke HIV, I don’t suppose COVID (or plague) in some form or other is going to completely disappear, but I do expect that we will learn to live with it, and celebrate the times between outbreaks, in the process, creating room for joy.
My Sci-Fu (Science-Based Future Study) novel THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor is actually about just that. Each generation accepts the world as it is when they finally awaken to it, clearing the way for a life of joy and enthusiasm for the “new normal” that, to them, is simply “normal.” Taking up where TOTAL MELTDOWN (Borgo/Wildside 2009) by Raymond Gaynor and William Maltese left off, NewAmerica, a shadow of its former United States of America, provides a challenging and dangerous future place for three young firebrands to live. In Douglas Adams’ the HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, our world is credited as being “mostly safe,” basically because of this “new generation” phenomenon, an attitude everyone today can appreciate and apply, allowing us to re-experience joy in a perhaps new way, but joy nonetheless.
The Edge of Madness
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999693859
Now that those who want to be immunized are finally getting vaccinated, what, two weeks after the second dose, does joy feel like in the “new normal” world?
Well, first a caveat. If you still don’t consider mask wearing, voluntary distancing and frequent hand washing “normal,” then maybe this question is premature. Maybe. On the other hand, I’ve never in the past gone a whole year without even a cold. Maybe that’s one silver lining to our resurrected public health, long ignored in the USA. Maybe that’s something to be joyous about. I think it is.
But I’m referring here to something more: What it feels like to accept the “new normal,” whatever it is going to be, and simply get on with life, joy being at the very heart of it all. Getting out and about, for instance. Even masked, distanced and frequently-hand-washed, it’s a joy to be able to walk outside and re-experience nature and our world once again.
I think of COVID as the heterosexual version of HIV. LIke HIV, I don’t suppose COVID (or plague) in some form or other is going to completely disappear, but I do expect that we will learn to live with it, and celebrate the times between outbreaks, in the process, creating room for joy.
My Sci-Fu (Science-Based Future Study) novel THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor is actually about just that. Each generation accepts the world as it is when they finally awaken to it, clearing the way for a life of joy and enthusiasm for the “new normal” that, to them, is simply “normal.” Taking up where TOTAL MELTDOWN (Borgo/Wildside 2009) by Raymond Gaynor and William Maltese left off, NewAmerica, a shadow of its former United States of America, provides a challenging and dangerous future place for three young firebrands to live. In Douglas Adams’ the HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, our world is credited as being “mostly safe,” basically because of this “new generation” phenomenon, an attitude everyone today can appreciate and apply, allowing us to re-experience joy in a perhaps new way, but joy nonetheless.
The Edge of Madness
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999693859
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