Right now I’m sitting here at the kitchen table looking out the bay window watching the green leaves and limbs sway gently in the late spring breeze. Just through the tree tops, partially blocked from view is a clear blue sky. Only days or was it weeks, perhaps months ago, from this same chair I could see through the leafless trees and wonder at the their dormant beauty. Only remembering that gray clouds bringing stormy rain, pounding through the forest and on my back deck. Thunder rolled through my head as lightning flashed, momentarily bringing bright light to the dull grayness.
Has it really been that long? Quarantined. Forced to remain inside. Going nowhere because of an indivisible enemy, a dreadful killer virus. Well, maybe not so much forced as requested by our government as a way of not inadvertently spreading the virus to others. Stay-at-home orders passed down by a government, perhaps suggestions at first, but then orders “for your own safety”.
Ok, so we complied. Giving up our freedom to go and be with other people. They called it “social distancing”. If you did go out, it must be for the essentials – groceries and the like. But, some of you can go to work. Only if they, the government, deemed your work essential to the operation of protecting the country or caring for the infected.
After all the whole is greater than the one. Heard that somewhere.
While this seemed a little dictatorial, it “made sense” because hundreds of thousands, or was it millions of people were projected to die from this dreaded virus. The models said so.
Now, weeks or is it months later, the “worst” hasn’t happened. The models were wrong, and perhaps the social distancing has also reduced the “numbers”.
And the people are beginning to question what’s being done for our own good, that is to “keep us safe”. Just how much of our freedom have we relinquished? Can we get it back? Have we allowed power hungry politicians to get an upper hand on us – we the people?
Our economy shot, destroyed, businesses going under; but wait the government is throwing us a bone. Money, more money, free money to save our small, family-owned businesses. Well there is a slight catch, it’s a loan. And soon, that is when it’s best for our own safety, we will be allowed to begin venturing out and seeing others. As long as we maintain a “social distance”.
But as for me, I’m just sitting here admiring the morning sun and gentle breeze, through the leaves of the hardwood trees, that I can see through the bay window, across the back deck. Swaying to and fro as time passes. Quarantined for just a little longer and looking for the day I can return to my job.
Just Pondering.