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A few college kids could be seen roaming around the Davidson College campus in North Carolina this week. The Fall semester edges near. It will be unlike any Fall semester in the history of American higher education.
You know. You don’t need to be reminded.
Seeing the students, even all masked up, was such a welcome sight, a reminder of what once was way back last Fall – hundreds of years ago — when life was drastically different, when our lives were less tumultuous and odd. There were problems back them. Now there are thoughts of a world transmogrified into something foreign, not amusing, and totally unsettled.
Witnessing the students roaming around the grass amid the great-looking campus buildings made me think of what they’re thinking of all this. How has all this upheaval affected them? It has to be bothersome and make them wonder what the point of life is if it’s polluted by a virus you can’t see that kills people without apologizing.
College life is about togetherness. Togetherness is not staying six feet away. I feel for those kids. They deserve a better college experience.
I wish they didn’t have to ever know what a pandemic is. At the start of this year I did not know what the term meant. Now I wish I never had to find out.
Are we inching back to whatever normalcy is, or was? What will normalcy be? People are using the term “new normal” as the place we are headed. Sounds stupid and uninspiring. I prefer “new opportunities,” and “new explorations.”
Will we recognize this next place we’re going and embrace it? Will it really be better than it has been? I believe so because I choose to.
Who knew what 2020 would bring us? Answer: no one.
Glimpses pop up here and there of a better life coming after six months of abject weirdness, staying alone in rooms, keeping away from other people, all the time every day.
One glimpse that looks and feels good is watching golf. At least we can be soothed by that experience of focusing our minds in a meditative way on something calm, lush green instead of the orangish red of fires burning police cars. Staring at green grass is a precious respite from the news depicting the daily avalanche of stats about all the bad things happening all over the world because of the virus.
At least we get to see grass and think about very little instead of seeing the fires and wondering will go down in flames next. Golf watching is what we need, more time thinking about nothing other than a little white ball flying through the air and landing on a green sometimes near a flag fluttering in the wind on a summer day. Natural beauty at its best.
That’s so much more restful than the thoughts of vaccines and politics and the streets of Oregon aflame every night for eighty something consecutive evenings. What are those people thinking and doing? What’s their endgame?
Stop the rioting. Please, just don’t break into buildings and burn things. We’ve got too much to overcome already without compounding the hot mess and turning it into an inferno of abysmal desperation and everlasting insanity.
Day after day, so many millions of people are doing their best to abide by the social distancing rules. They sit at their desks working from home doing conference calls, reading work stuff, thinking, alone with their thoughts and in their rooms where no one else has been for one hundred and eighty something days. No one’s ever around us anymore. Can’t get too close. For months and months and months and months and months.
I saw a kid this morning riding around on the neighborhood street on his scooter. Kids aren’t supposed to do stuff alone. They’re getting used to playtime by themselves. That’s sad. Childhood should be much simpler and more fun than this.
How much longer? Get here, vaccine. End this.
I have been thinking quite a bit lately about the impressive and admirable mental discipline of everybody in America who is doing what they are supposed to do enduring this elongated psychological torment.
I salute them for gutting this thing out. They’re to be revered for not giving up hope. They’re awesome.
No matter how unsure everything continues to be, they get up in the morning, dress, doing their jobs or look for jobs, get by, push ahead, on foot in front of the other, inch by inch, making to-do lists because we can’t control anything else. They’ve been been surviving a 24/7 fiasco, a catastrophic nightmare, for six months.
It takes discipline and courage to put up with all they have this year.
I am proud of people in this country who have tolerated all this bad stuff. Never have I been more sure that we can handle a whole lot of adversity and still go on.
It will take more than this to bring us down.
Be hopeful.
We will overcome. And the partying will be better than ever.
Happy Saturday.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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