The Beginning of the End

A year. A year of isolation.

It’s a year last night that I had tacos and a movie with a friend. It’s the last night I sort of felt any normalcy – except nothing was normal. I was aware of coughing in the theatre, flashing back to the SFX in the movie Outbreak, where little specks of contagion flutter overhead people in a theatre as the flickering images highlighted the virus spreading. Not the most conducive to following the plot, which was, ironically, Parasite – about an insidious and unwanted infestation.

Later that week, on the 11th, I knew I’d just had my last chiropractor appointment, because my heart had raced with paranoia the whole time. But I decided to chance one last breakfast out. And that’s when I knew everything had changed. So much anxiety as others dined around me, carefree and chatty. All the while, I thought, “How could they not know how dangerous this is?”

That night, the NBA suspended play and Tom Hanks announced he had been infected. Two days later, a global pandemic was finally declared.

And everything really had changed. Even that movie theatre I loved has since closed permanently.

Photo: For the first five months of the virus, this was what I saw. I had no patio. It was illegal to even sit on a park bench. I was on the 14th floor with four elevators, and I’d been following the news since day one, I knew it was airborne. The elevators terrified me. My anxiety was an 11 out of 10, every single day.

The Gift of Perspective

I’m an odd duck. Anxiety runs my life, sometimes. It either spurs my action or cowers me into inaction, but it’s never far away. I think it’s partly a poorly managed life balance, but also remnants of the head injury from the 2004 scooter accident where I somehow defied death.

And yet I find myself skilled in finding levity or optimism in what has been among the toughest tests many of us have ever faced.

Thing about travelling alone is, conversations don’t tend to distract one from noticing the world whilst moving through it. So, you spot the bullet holes, the mortar scars, the commemorative plaques, the rubble.

History’s there, all around. With it, lessons. Lessons about what we’re capable of, good and bad. The crimes and atrocities we commit, the kindness and resilience we’ve shown. It’s all there.

But you don’t have to travel abroad to see the lessons in history.

Books do that too.

Better than Before

The thing about the “Great Flu,” as a movie I just saw calls the so-called Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-1920, is that we don’t see it much in media. It’s not the subject of movies or shows, so, many of us had never thought much about it.

But compared to that, this has been nothing. The world’s population in 1918 was 1.8 billion and they lost 50 to 100 million people to that pandemic.

This time, Earth’s got over four times their population and our global death toll is just 2.6 million so far.

Obviously, it’s still an enormous tragedy but it doesn’t remotely compare to what they survived with the Spanish Flu. And they had no vaccine created, nor could they communicate with the world around them as they locked down. They could only read a newspaper each day. Only the wealthiest people had a phone or radio then, or even electricity.

It helps to know that history – how terrifying and dark a time that was – because then you can look at the world they had right after, the Roaring ‘20s.

Photo: Harlem’s Jazz Age, 1920s. From Everett/Shutterstock.

The Jazz Age.

The greatest creatives of the time, the Lost Generation, congregating in Paris for Les années folles. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Ford Madox Ford, and on it goes.

The photographs of the era show an age of jubilation and fun, camaraderie and celebration — an era that is number one with a bullet for when I’d visit with a time machine, if ever I could.

They didn’t continue cowering indoors alone, or keeping people at arm’s length, after the terrors of the Spanish Flu. They had one of the most exciting epochs of human history.

Many people wonder aloud if we’ll ever be the same as we were before 2020. Of course we won’t. We’ll be different, and so we should be.

But different isn’t bad.

When North Americans travel to places like Greece or Italy or France, they marvel at how locals seem able to stop time and seize the moment with others. I found that to be the strongest in Bosnia, where they lived through Europe’s most recent war, suffering the brunt of the battles and the most death. Sarajevans were masters of the afternoon coffee. Time with others – time spent stopping time. Because they understand how fleeting life is, and how precious those moments are.

For us, if we’re lucky, we will love others better, appreciate friendships and community. We’ll understand the value of empathy and the gloriousness of the freedom to live a simple life.

Some lessons come with a heavy price.

The After Times

So, it’s been a year.

I’m looking forward to hugging people. Ordering fearlessly in a restaurant. Writing on some lazy winter day next year, as rain falls and the bustle of a café unfolds around me. Strolling carelessly through a store as I pick up products to read labels without wondering who touched it before me.

Vaccines abound. Soon, it’ll be my turn, your turn. Things have started slowly, but the rollout foundation has been laid and vaccinations will escalate quickly.

Photo: Drop it like it’s hot. The Jazz Age.

This Thing We Did

For me, sometimes I think about the vaccine, and it’s emotional. Not just because it means the end, but because it means humanity had this massive challenge, and we’ve bound together to solve it.

The vaccine is the moonshot of our time.

It’s the unthinkably hard scientific challenge that was supposed to take at least 18 months before it’d even been cracked — which already would have been a ludicrous accomplishment in the annals of epidemiology — and here we are, a year in and already 15% of the USA has been vaccinated.

It’s a phenomenal moment for humanity. One we will look back upon later in our lives as being a triumph many of us couldn’t revel in while it unfolded.

But that’s what it is. I’m here for it, man. I am so blessedly aware of just what an amazing triumph this is, and I’ll get my shot when my time comes.

For now, I’m grateful I’m safe, I’m at home, I’ve got food, I’ve got work, and I’ll get through this.

We are so very lucky this pandemic has only been as bad as this. It could have been so much worse. Science saved us — whether it’s in treatment protocols, how to stay safe, or even in just readily available disinfectants. That’s all down to science.

So many folks have lost so much, and these advances don’t change their loss. But at least with science on our side, many of us have come through unscathed, and hope is rounding the bend and heading our way.

I’m ready.

I think it will be one of the finest summers of my life, one in which I truly appreciate the simple, quiet, fortunate moments of simply being alive. Small talk with strangers. Standing three feet away, not six. Ahh, bliss.

So, don’t let this week’s heavy anniversary get you down.

We are resilient. We are nearly there. History teaches us that, yes, we can move past this, and we can be made better from it.

Here’s to the months ahead.

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