A Social Contract

Well, another Covid Christmas has come and gone. And let’s hope that’s the last of them. Just when we thought there was a light glimmering at the end of the tunnel, turns out it was a freight train coming at us, full of a cargo of Omicron.

Yes, I know that cargo is for ships and I’m spewing out clichés and mixed metaphors here. But that’s the thing with this pandemic: it twists and turns and mixes up your thoughts and emotions.  One minute you’re dreaming of a White Christmas at a big family gathering, the next you’re shaking your fist up at the skies. More clichés.

Just when you thought: but most of us did everything right. In the early days of the pandemic, we grocery shopped just once a week to prevent putting a burden on grocery store clerks and healthcare workers. We got double-vaxxed. We kept our distance and changed our routines. We masked and double-masked.

But the truth is – this virus finds the weakest link, the population where the majority are not vaxxed or don’t have access to one and stealthily takes hold. And that’s why I’ve been thinking how it is our responsibility to not just take care of our own little bubble, but to honour the ‘social contract’ we have made, which the poetic Theresa Kishkan speaks of so eloquently in her post here.  

Our contract is to think of our doctors and nurses who are so, so damn tired and being asked to do more, more. Our contract is to make sounds decisions on getting vaxxed and boosted based on science and not opinion or vague, unfounded fears and beliefs.

And while I’m on this little rant (and let’s face it, that’s what it is), allow me to also shake a fist at all the self-appointed soothers and self-help gurus of social media who parcel out treacly clichés, advising us to stay strong, be positive, stay focused…blah..blah..blah…and everything will be just fine. Cue the angel harps. Positivity to the exclusion of all else can be toxic, which you can read up on here. 

It can be harmful to those who hang on to some of this drivel, the posturers who set out to portray their lives as perfect and their wisdom up to any challenge. I’m all for a positive outlook on life, but the danger here of advising nothing but positivity is the unspoken blame – that if you feel anything less than positive, it’s your own fault. Kind of like blaming the cancer patient for her failure to recover because she didn’t vibe positively enough.

So bah to the toxic positivity preachers! Feel whatever it is the heck you want to feel. And if that means sitting in your pj’s, shaking your fist up at the skies, being anxious about the state of the world or fed-up with people’s self-centred behaviour, so be it.  We’re all tired of living with anxiety and uncertainty. We want to stop fretting. We want the world to be a calmer, less chaotic, less uncertain place. We want to return to worrying about the little everyday things like aching feet and hands and houseplants wilting, instead of thinking about hospital ICUs being jammed up. 

The Poinsettia didn't make it to Christmas

And yet – there are also those authentic souls to be found on social media and I do follow a few. Those who bare their true feelings and realistic snapshots of life, who give shout-outs to others and tell it like it is. The ones who delight us with their originality and talent. Oh and the witty ones! They’re priceless and I thank them for some damn good belly laughs.

The incense ash clung on till the end

But here is also what I’m thinking. Maybe, in the vast continuum of time in the universe, these COVID years are just a blip in Earth’s lifespan. And maybe it is now the part that every human being on Earth needs to play. Our role is to tolerate this virus coming into and disrupting our lives in order for it to evolve; to allow our human bodies to develop immunity to the corona virus in order to protect future generations from even more dangerous ones to come. It is part of the evolution of life on Earth, and the social contract we have been given right now is for the benefit of those to come. Wouldn’t it be incredible (or devastatingly sad?) to return to Earth a few hundred years from now and see what legacy we have left behind? Who will those humans be?

Okay, so maybe this pandemic has messed with my mind more than I realize (although admittedly my mind is usually quite messy anyways). But still…maybe our contract is not with the present, but with the future.