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.