Tag: CT

To the present,

There is no doubt this is an unfamiliar and terrible time. It is so easy to be negative about the deaths occurring every second, the sick who cannot be visited by loved ones, and the fact that the world is in a recession. Due to this urgent situation, we must all work together to put an end to this horrific phenomenon. Although staying away from each other is the best way to stop the virus we still must spread hope and positivity, even if it has to be six feet apart, during this hard time. This situation is more serious than I ever could have imagined just a couple of weeks ago, and I am sure many of you feel the same way. Living in a suburb of New York City, a major COVID-19 hotspot, multiple crucial precautions and rules have been set in place to prevent the spread of this pandemic. Through my life drastically changing in just days, I have learned how urgent this situation is becoming. Even though the virus may not be a major concern in your town, at the rate that COVID-19 is spreading, the disease will reach you soon. For instance, my dad works in Russia and just a couple of weeks ago he went to a soccer game in a stadium with around sixty-eight thousand people. My dad was cautious during this game, acknowledging the risks of his situation, yet his friends thought he was a fixated germaphobe since at the time there were very few cases in Russia. However now the entire country is on complete lockdown and anyone who goes out of their house who is not going to the grocery store or pharmacy gets arrested. This shows how quickly the situation can escalate, although it is slightly different in Russia since Putin can make extreme decisions more easily and quickly. The fact that the virus is extremely serious is paralleled in the US. 

To posterity,

When I first learned about COVID-19, I did not think it was going to be a big deal. I heard that schools might be closed for about two weeks and was super excited to get to spend that time with my friends. When some of my family members, particularly my uncle, started to buy extra toilet paper and food in early February, I thought he was crazy. This is going to blow over in a month, I thought, just like the flu comes around every winter. But boy was I wrong. I never could have imagined going to online school every day and being deprived of my last trimester in middle school, let alone the seniors who will most likely not get the experience of graduating that, in some cases, they have waited fourteen years to do. Being in quarantine is unlike anything I have ever experienced. We have to stay inside all day except for the occasional outing during which masks are required. All of the public places like parks and school grounds are closed, except for necessary facilities like grocery stores and pharmacies. Even there, everyone is expected to wear masks and gloves; the aisles are one way so that no one passes by each other and the lines at the registers are marked with tape so that everyone stands away from each other. It truly feels like an altered reality that even our parents have not experienced. This is new ground for everyone and requires adaptation to this temporary new way of life until a vaccine is created, which scientists predict will not be for another eighteen months. Doctors, scientists, and first responders have been true heroes. They have risked their health for ours and are saving many lives without much recognition for it. However, they are very overworked and hospital resources are decreasing. Doctors have to make the heartbreaking decisions, like if a dwindling 80-year-old with lung conditions or a previously healthy 60-year-old with younger kids and grandkids should get the hospital’s last ventilator. Overall, life, as we knew and as you know, is completely altered, completely unfamiliar, and completely unpredictable.

Our future, it’s uncertain. We’re on a path to self destruction, but almost no one seems to care. Right now, the future of humanity is in a plane with no pilot, dropping out of the sky. Every single passenger can fly the plane, but no one wants to risk unstrapping their seatbelt and walking into the cockpit. That would be dangerous. So when I think of a future, two scenarios come to mind.

In the first scenario, no one stands up, and the plane crashes. It’s a time and place where water is scarce, trees seldom stand, and food is a luxury. Where the once lush Earth is now bleak, barren, and brutally hot. Where our skin gets burned when we step outside, where we need to wear oxygen masks to survive, where everyone is the enemy. Where we go extinct. We’ll look back in anguish and wonder where it all went wrong.

We burned too much fossil fuels. Wouldn’t stop. Bred too much livestock. Wouldn’t stop. Cleared too many trees. Wouldn’t stop. Wasted too much stuff. Wouldn’t stop.

And we’ll think, Why didn’t we do something? Why didn’t we stop when we knew we should’ve? We’ll think, and think, and think some more, our oxygen mask clamped against our red, searing, sweltering face. We’ll think with our stomach rumbling in the background, our tongues cracking, lips chapped. We’ll think and think and think and think, until we can’t think anymore. We’ll probably come up with lots of excuses. Excuses like, it would have been impossible to stop or lots of people would suffer if we tried to do something. This is what we’ll tell our kids, our grandkids. We’ll try to explain to them, try to make them see it from our point of view. But they will never forgive us. Because no excuses will ever excuse the fact that we knowingly did this to ourselves. That we did it, hoping with almost no hope that the data was faulty, that the predictions wouldn’t come true. That the scientists, the activists, that they were wrong, all wrong. But they weren’t.

But there’s another way. We can take off our seatbelts. We can stand up. We can fly the plane, and save ourselves.

When the coronavirus struck, we took action. Schools were closed. Countries locked down. We didn’t pretend it wasn’t real. We searched for solutions. The world united and took action. This kind of leadership, it’s what we need right now. It’s what we need if we want future generations to even have a future.

The coronavirus, it’s awful. Hundreds of thousands have died, and more will certainly follow. But if there’s one positive to this disease, one lesson to be learned, it’s that we can work together to accomplish a common goal, no matter the size. Once we accept this, we can solve our most daunting challenge ever: climate change.

We can do it. The solution, it’s right in front of us. It’s been there for years. We just need to take action. And once we do, it’ll be great. It’ll be historic. Our kids, our grandkids, they’ll listen in awe as we tell them how the great world leaders of the 2020s turned it all around. And then they’ll ask, “but how did you do it?” And we’ll look back and remember how we changed our fate. We’ll tell them all the details.

We burned too much fossil fuels. But we stopped. Bred too much livestock. But we stopped. Cleared too many trees. But we stopped. Wasted too much stuff. But we stopped.

They’ll learn about how we stopped doing what was easy, and started doing what was right. They’ll learn about how we knew that the data wasn’t faulty, that the predictions would come true if nothing changed. They’ll learn about how we stopped hoping that the scientists, the activists, that they were wrong, all wrong. Because they were right.

My old life wastes away, carried by the same wind that carries the virus that ruined my senior year. I used to run and jump. I felt the deep burn of fatigue run up my legs, punch my thighs, and sit on my chest. I always hated that feeling in the moment. My mind was often unwilling to let my body continue suffering through the symptoms of athletics. In my bed, I can feel myself disintegrating. My mind and body left without exercise, floating into nothingness. My bones slowly lose density as I am untethered in deep space, with nothing to latch on too. The concept of doing bicep curls in my basement disgusts me, as all I want is to slam my chest barbarically, lock eyes with my opponent, and see him find out that I am and will always be better. I know now that that feeling may never return.

The streets are different to me. Barren and fallow, I traverse a ghost town in a car that nobody cares I have now. The lights are always green. My drives aren’t the same. I am late to everything, ask anyone who has known me for more than a year. Whenever I say that I’ll be somewhere in five minutes, they call it the David Five, which usually means closer to fifteen or twenty. That was before. I drive aimlessly now, accelerating out of desire not need. The same traffic lights that caused me irritation once now leave me wanting more. They are boring. They give me what I want. Now I realize that I don’t even want that.

I broke up with my girlfriend over the phone. I cried for the first time since my basketball season ended. I know she cried a lot that week. She was amazing. She was the best friend anyone could ever ask for. Hopefully I can change that was to is soon. Her laugh is unmatched, especially the ugly one. She snorts sometimes if you get her really good. Her nose is slopped like the tips of my skis. Her eyes are like diamonds, her lips are like pillows, and her cheeks look like they are being held up with strings. I am really bad at communication and since the year started I never told her any of this. I don’t know why. I wish it hadn’t burned out. A star that once shone so bright slowly collapses in on itself, leaving nothing but a black abyss behind. I felt like everytime we talked I fell deeper into that abyss. I wish I knew why. We dated for two and a half years and now it’s over.

Chaos and history. 

There is perhaps no other incident, in my little bubble of a life, that I suppose will be so feverishly illustrated in the scripts, texts, or future chronicles. 

“A Global Pandemic Hits the 21st Century, Leaving Metropolises Bare” 

How exactly are we living in these ensuing stories? How are we internalizing, how are we struggling to live through a virus as our archenemy? From the suburbs to urban centers, who are the people being affected by this invasion? In essence, all of us are. We’re facing this as both a current issue and one that seemingly shifts in 24-hour cycles, an infiltrator that we can not see but we surely know is there. Perhaps that’s the scariest part of it all. There is no face, but some abstract micro-rendition that’s hard to comprehend.

Many of my fellow Gen-Zers have not lived to see such a virus, let alone one that halts the gears in the machine of everyday life. I find that anecdotes can be a pleasing way to not only comfort but connect, especially in a time where we’re separated by self instated 6-foot bubbles. So let me delve a bit into my rather ordinary experience.

My community is located about an hour’s train ride from New York City, the current epicenter of the nation’s panic. Fortunately, it doesn’t feel like the outskirts of a warzone, but that doesn’t cover the fact of how terrifying this conflict is. We have growing deaths, ill-equipped soldiers, and faulty information. My aunt, who works at a rather large regional hospital has been pulled from her normal sector and into the danger zone, doing her best, but seemingly without our best. We have major discrepancies that will forever cause ripples and changes once these shadows pass. 

Furthermore, I find there are a myriad of questions that I have for not only our leadership but the public. Why has x happened when we had y? Or why has x happened when we thought we had y? How do we fix the supposed safety nets that may have existed but did not function? Being that, as I write this piece, COVID-19 remains in a whirl, I have yet to review and see this issue with hindsight. I know, like such other turbulences, there will be consequential modifications to our systems. Our lives may not be the status quo we have known prior. While this is partly a natural phenomenon, it is one of the most colossal cultural and systematic rattlers that I have ever lived through. 

In the beginning, my emotions seemed much rawer, but possibly as the result of coping, I’ve found myself subconsciously rationalizing reality. Never did I think within weeks, swaths of the world would be sheltered into their own corners, nor did I expect a headline breaking pandemic in the first place. Intuition tells me that I’ll be more shocked after the most severe side effects subdue and I can examine these events without present interference. I remain hopeful that a net positive will be created out of a seemingly overwhelming austere situation. Either way, no matter how equipped or ready we are, the ride has begun. 

A scary and monumental episode in human experience, our stories, set to unwrap at a price we do not yet know.