Last year when people started working from home, air quality all over the planet improved because w didn’t start our cars and keep them running until we found a parking spot far away.
Plants and wild animals thrived because we didn’t make them so nervous by assuming they wanted to be the way we wanted them to be.
Tour buses, airplanes and cruise ships were silent, and sporting events were limited to the basement or the backyard.
We were busy not being busy. We recognized the significance of what swept over us, we adjusted, we downsized, we got closer to those we preferred to be around, learned better money management, and for 2020 at least, didn’t shoot at each other with abandon.
We were skeptical and reluctant, but we were also pretty good at being a hibernation nation.
Seven out of 10 of us had our work schedules altered and stayed in our PJs until after lunchtime, which was, oh, sometime during the day, whenever.
We learned to make health decisions for ourselves because we had time. Nobody wanted to go to the doctor because, yeah, well you know, we didn’t want to get sick. Besides, doctors wouldn’t let us in because they were really busy.
We got just enough money from Uncle Sam to prevent a breakdown, and we didn’t go out and spend it because we didn’t go out.
We learned more about technology than was necessary and we’re now good at that, too. We made online banking, shopping, Zooming, and isolated food procurement work for us. We mastered sitting light in the saddle.
We felt practically scholarly when we discovered that being alone is wonderful and has nothing to do with loneliness. Did you know that 60 percent of married people are lonely, and that social media makes people even lonelier than that? Yes, absolutely, not always, not everyone and not forever. But true.
We learned more about us than we used to know. Two years ago, we were more likely to keep assaulting the natural world and our own fettle, but then we boiled kale and drank the pot likker. It turned out good!
We looked at and beyond stars and bugs, absorbing our surroundings. We stayed at least the length of a full-grown man from people, so we looked at them differently. They weren’t in our space, so we were calmer.
Today we’re not buying the things we don’t need but think we need – like things, just things. We found out that being quiet is as potent as an X-ray and more revealing. Only a virus like the one we were experiencing could push our pause button as stubbornly as it was pushed.
None of us suffered from indifference. We were given some facts, some rules, some recommendations, and for the most part it was up to us to decide how to use them. We made decisions best we knew how and did it again tomorrow when we got new facts and more information.
Now we endure people who ask if we’ve been vaccinated the way they used to ask if we were married. It’s still none of their business, but now we know that when we want something new, we have to stop doing something old.
So, we just don’t get all huffy.
Huggy, either.