The Word of God
COVID-19 In the Rear View Mirror
“‘She’ was in another terrible mood, and no one was going to get out alive, or at least, without needing a strong sedative, a bottle of Motrin, a deep skin massage, or all of the above. Someone must have contradicted her, called her out on the condescending tones and thinly veiled insults, or finally just yelled back. But that’s all it took to unleash the Kraken and a new level of their hostile work environment that made a pack of hungry, feeding hyenas look like a quilting bee.”
Amazingly, I wrote that paragraph in the midst of the worst of the COVID-19 shadow under which many of us lived for a much longer time than we would like to admit. Still, history has an interesting and perennial way of either embarrassing us or supporting our earlier assertions about how things are, regardless of who agrees with us. Regardless of where we stand in those loosely contrived categories, one thing is for sure: we made it!
Recently, and very unpleasantly, I had the outrageous fortune of having to deal with the inspiration of that first paragraph. Even though it has been more than five years during the dark ages of COVID, you would think people might have sharpened just a little, at least when it comes to those critical perspectives on life that really make a difference. Sadly, for some and perhaps for many, it did not.
It never ceases to amaze me how often people whine and complain about how lonely they are and how so many others “just don’t like me.” I don’t think it’s because they live in a bubble, but perhaps it’s because they’ve placed everyone else in one. In another post, I wrote about the perception that there are too many doctors and not enough patients revealing my own perspective that everyone seems too quick to judge other people rather than live and let live.
And then it hit me. Problems and challenges don’t create character. They reveal it and the very soul of a person. The more that someone has suffered gallantly, the more noble they have become. I want to be in their company. And I suspect you do too.
So, before we are saddled with the next big crisis, be it global or personal, why don’t we just take a few minutes to review our own lives and relationships? We know that an unexamined life is not worth living and while a terribly unhappy and unfulfilled life makes so many other people miserable, I think we have plenty of inspiration and reasons to keep improving this great adventure we call life.
I am so ready.
