All You Have To Do Is Cross Out The Wrong Words

 “Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.” Mark Twain.

The world will soon open up and things will begin to return to normal complicated. Or what we once considered normal. But surely that has changed? Are we ready for life to speed up? Are you?  Am I?

Surely that is the question we are all asking ourselves. What happens when life returns to the routines of before and do we want to go back to that?

I’m not sure I want I don’t want to get back to long commutes on crowded trains jostling for space, working in a dull cubicle, getting dressed in pants that have fitted waistbands instead of stretchy ones.

Yes we all have COVID fatigue. Some of us are just plain weary and exhausted and fed-up disgusted with the divisiveness, belligerent anti-vaxxers, menacing convoys. We want it to all go away and return to being nice, ordinary, polite Canadians. More compassionate, more informed, more liberal-minded, Better than our neighbors to the south, although if we’re honest, it looks like we have some a lot of that blinkered intolerant, bigoted, obnoxious thinking here. It’s embarrassing and saddening sickening. The fact that many rich American communities funded the protests is even more sickening.

But the world is soon going to open up, speed up again. Will we be expected to speed up with it? Will we have to return to the office? Put on our game faces again? Will we be expected required to sit around conference room tables, nodding and smiling acquiescing, when we could have been at home, video camera off, muted, working on another more pressing task?

When will I be able to stop cringing swearing whenever I see a beefed-up pick-up truck on the road, sporting a huge Canadian flag? And why do I immediately assume it means they’re aligned with the convoys? I used to feel pride when I saw cars and vans sporting Canadian flags. Now I feel anxious. Now it seems sinister and unpatriotic.

What about all those invitations that never arrived in the past two years and so you didn’t have to wonder agitate over how to politely decline say no? Will we have to fabricate excuses lie again?

If I’m being frank, I’d rather the world didn’t just go full steam ahead.

Sure, many people some people can be fun, charming and agreeable in small doses irritating, intrusive, annoying. Patience and diplomacy is often needed often not in my repertoire. And what things unpleasant truths does that then reveal about me?

There are gems though, those whose light shines through without the dullness of years of accumulated veneers. Have the last two years built layers onto people or stripped them away? And how does one discover that if we all put back on the social masks we once wore and pretend that everything is back to usual? Can we filter our lenses to only look for the good or must we open our eyes wide so that we see clearly and don’t kid ourselves?

The world is opening up and life is about to get enjoyable and exciting complicated.  What happens when all the divided parties meet again over the dinner table? How can we choose what our own personal normal looks like?

It’s not easy to write about how we wish the world to unfold and emerge from this pandemic; about how we may blink at the light and wonder in which direction to head. Hopefully it will be the right one.

We were  all not in this together.