Five Months Until Christmas!

As they say where has the year gone!  We knew that we had enjoyed the first two decades of the 21st Century and that they had flown by.  They had been composed of joy mixed with sorrow.  But now 2020 was here and the door was open to the opportunities of our third decade in a time that we used to sing about and the preachers preached about and the Jetsons flitted about from place to place in their flying cars!  The new century was unimaginable to me…and I was born in 1957.  Until it happened I had not conceived that there was a good possibility that my life would cover parts of two centuries!  I can recall when the George Orwell book, 1984, was not only a prophecy of a dystopian future…but was well into my future!  Remember when the comic book detective Dick Tracy had the neatest screen communicator that he wore on his wrist…at least we have achieved that future shock…

We have spent the majority of 2020 peering out our windows and hoping for a vaccine for our pandemic.  This was something that other countries suffered.  We had not seen such an event for over 100 years!  And yet it came like a thief in the night.  We first did not believe and then we believed…and then we backslid into our old familiar patterns…and then it was time for school to start again.  We discovered that out plans meant nothing…our career construct had been changed…and no matter how badly we wanted for our business or church or bar or restaurant to be reopened…the opening of the  doors to our establishment did not matter much if our customers were sick… physical church attendance seemed irrelevant if our congregants were dying…beer with others did not seem as important if our good friends from our local Pub…were dead…

As we members of the human family do…we obfuscated…  We have been told for most of my life…that smoking kills…but not me!  Obesity will shorten your life…but not mine.  Face masks and social distancing and hand washing will greatly improve our possibility of not contracting the coronavirus…but I will be all right if I refuse to wear a face mask!  It is not a virus that can take my life and the life of my loved ones…that is macabre!  It must be a political hoax thought up by the deep state…and it will all be over in November…  Denial is a balm to the frightened soul…it wears the cloak of the Grim Reaper!

I have had some very enjoyable times, thus far, in our 2020.  Though physical distanced and separated I have felt closer to many people than ever before.  Hard times often bring out the best in us.  When we make our entrance onto life’s stage…we feel invincible!  Our performance is outstretched before us…and we are busy learning our lines…  We instinctively understand that what we have been given is rare and precious and to be relished and savored.  Then there are times like our ever fleeting 2020…and we re-understand that everything that we have and every thing that we will ever become is a gift that can evaporate in the blink of our eyes…  I think that it is time for me to look for my old Dick Tracy Watch!