Hmmm, will it pass any quicker if we hide from it?
Our second COVID summer is now behind us, although all that really means is that we are now in our second COVID autumn. We are not locked down which I guess is something for which to be grateful. But the fourth wave is keeping us masked and in many ways still restricted.
Vaccine passports are now the hot topic of conversation. On this issue there really is no middle ground. We are hopelessly divided as a society. There is pro and there is con and never the twain shall meet. Restaurant staff have the unenviable task of having to enforce the passport policy – forced to be the bad guy in place of the regulators who make the rules.
We found our way through a COVID election which turned out to be the most useless election in Canadian history. It changed absolutely nothing in the House of Parliament. $610 flushed down the bottomless pit of bureaucracy. The party that received the most votes once again did not win which some find distressing. But that is low on my list of things I would like to see changed.
The NHL is gearing up for another season with the prospect of substantial fans in the stands once again. But some players are standing on principle and refusing to be vaccinated. The league is tiptoeing around the issue with restrictions and sanctions while giving teams the right to suspend players who refuse to be vaccinated.
Working at home is still a reality for many people. Deadline after deadline for returning to the office or workplace has been cancelled or pushed forward. Meanwhile, senior management are grappling with the minefield of vaccine policy – often searching for a safe middle ground that may not exist.
Children are back in school but socially distanced and masked. It is anybody’s guess whether or not in-person classes will last. And this just in: Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health is recommending that Ontario require vaccination for students who are eligible based on their age.
The new television season is about to launch which lends some spice to our dreary lives in the current circumstances. But our favourite actors in our favourite series are often wearing face masks and writers are embedding the pandemic into plot lines. We cannot escape COVID even when we turn on the television to escape for a while.
What has any of this got to do with the photo at the head of this post? Absolutely nothing, and everything, simultaneously.
The point is that just about everything in our lives at the moment is interpreted in light of, or filtered through the lens of, COVID. No single issue in recent memory has so infiltrated our lives and our minds. Even our language is changing.
But turn off the television, the radio and your mobile device (yes, the mobile device too) and take off your mask. Go for a walk on a nature trail where no one can impose their will on you and it does not matter whether or not you are vaccinated. Out there nothing has changed
The Great Blue Heron still stalks through the swamp in search of a meal and is quite happy to let you watch. Life goes on there as it always has.
COVID is only a moment in time. It will not pass any quicker if we hide from it. But what we miss while we are hiding can never be regained.
~ Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet
~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .
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Tags: COVID-19 · metaphor · Michael Robert Dyet · pandemicNo Comments