[Content warning: discussion of the death of the late George Floyd]
In my introductory blog post I stated that I'm not someone who appears capable of much profound thought. The following paragraphs may show some evidence that this isn't necessarily the case 100% of the time, being on the topic of 'Calamity'. But you be the judge of that.
I've never before experienced widescale calamity. There was the credit crunch, and austerity. And I'd argue that those events brought with them their share (too great a share!) of human tragedy, with an increase in debt problems, increased numbers of suicides, increased deaths of rough sleepers and similar. But those things largely took place quietly behind the scenes* and over a period. They made media attention periodically, but would always soon be eclipsed by something else**. Latterly, excuse my foul language, that something else was mostly Brexit. But if you ever read publications such as The Big Issue, even just from time to time, or stumbled upon one of the odd mainstream news items, then you were aware of the human cost of austerity. (And you, like me, were pretty well helpless to do anything about it.)
(*they shouldn't have; **and they shouldn't have been.)
Then there's 2020. The COVID-19 situation has been unlike anything I've experienced, and unlike anything experienced by anyone I've spoken to about it, including my folks and others of their generation.
I can recall worrying (dreaming, too) that it could be the end of civilisation - the apocalypse, no less. (I kept a diary for the first six weeks or so, which I may post at some point in the future, for what it's worth.)
I had a very anxious few weeks early on - I recall my final day working in the office, proper, and after lunch a colleague returning to the building to relate that there'd been a run on the cash machines! Holy crap, people, that's the kind of thing that can precipitate financial collapse - the climate crisis is going to bring that about soon enough, we don't need to hasten it along!
Thankfully, communities didn't take too long (in the scheme of things, anyway) to start rallying around for the less fortunate, and ensuring everyone had access to the things they needed. With clapping for key-workers, we even had a socially distant way to express our solidarity, for a while.
A couple of months or so on from the beginning of the lockdown (as I write), working from home has properly become 'the new normal' (to use a phrase which has become very
Anxiety provoking headlines such as: '2 meter social distancing rules to be relaxed', 'China second wave panic, Beijing districts in lockdown', and 'economy worse hit by coronavirus than the credit crunch'. And not to mention the death toll, the actual daily death toll figures which you couldn't (still can't) escape.
And then there was the tragic death by police brutality of a man accused of tendering a suspect $20 dollar bill. Twenty lousy dollars. RIP Mr George Floyd; I didn't know you but thinking of your death brings sorrowful tears into my eyes (and I actually hope it always will).
Protesting, the world over as it turns out, has understandably followed this outrage. So far away from me (geographically), the early coverage in the US had that slightly unreal feeling for me when I saw the news reports, as though I were seeing historical footage rather than something happening now.
I remember, when the story of the protests broke, thinking that the protesters were risking spreading the virus, anew. It took me a little while to realise how irrelevant that thought was.
Quite literally adding insult (but, scarily, also the threat of more violence) to injury, white supremacists chose to crawl out from beneath their rocks. I can't lie, I'd been feeling kind of numb. Not because I don't care, but because it just felt too big, too much to get my mind around. Just too much. Now, I'm struggling not to descend into despair.
Because even my social media feed is full of divisive stuff, stuff so thoughtlessly shared and re-shared, which nevertheless pours fuel on a fire which shouldn't be burning to begin with. I can't even face logging on to my social media accounts for a single minute any more. I've considered deactivating them.
It's incomprehensible to me. We, society, had ultimately appeared to pull together so well to try to support one another, and key-workers in particular, during the virus crisis these past months. And we, humankind, had been making gradual progress, it felt, toward increased racial equality in our lifetimes. But it turns out that it - all of it - was only an illusion; at least that's how I'm feeling right now.
Clapping for key-workers was ultimately pretty short lived. The government's setting its sights on 'recovery' (read: getting us all back to work, not costing the public purse any more money). The sun has shown itself here in the UK so everyone's forgotten the virus and they've been thronging the beaches and parks, forget about 2 meters between them. And littering and polluting, as though the world on which we live doesn't matter a damn, as though we've learned nothing -nothing- about the brevity of life.
And Trump. I can't help but feel that race relations wouldn't have been set back as it appears to me they have been lately if Trump weren't President over there in the US.
If there's a silver lining, it's that the Black Lives Matter message is very much at the forefront of all our attention now. I know that'll be no real comfort to the bereaved in the short term, but it's all I've got. And I've got to hope that it counts for something.
This has been a depressing blog post. I'm afraid that I don't have the answer to that, just as I (obviously) don't have the answer to what's going on in the world. I just feel that 2020 has been a calamitous year (and we're only halfway through it!)
It's likely that the next post I'll be composing will be about Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, and perhaps that's a bloody good thing. I feel there's a lot of us who could do with some therapy right now.
Or perhaps I ought to get my act into gear, first, and finish that post on Apps for Spirituality and Self Care. Watch this space. Do, please, watch this space - I promise my posts won't all be as depressing and misanthropic as this one!
Thank you for reading (to anyone who did!), and please scroll down a little further for a few links which may be of some help if you're feeling anything like I am.
Resources:-
And finally, please keep an eye on the comments as I hope to share some links to some other blogs with a bit more positivity, as a sort of antidote to the above - here's a couple to start you off:
Celebrating the Ordinary from @Kylara's Musings
and Worlds in Worlds, from @wakingmuser
Photo credit: @Josh Hild on Unsplash (subjects: unknown+)
List of weblinks in above blog post:-
Austerity = People's Assembly Against Austerity website
Climate crisis = World Wildlife Fund website
Ecosia = Ecosia search engine - the search engine that plants trees
Protesting = Black Lives Matter website
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And another more positive blog post if you're still in need of an antidote to the above, The Stars We Steer By, from Into the Mists:-
ReplyDeletehttps://greymists.wordpress.com/2020/06/15/the-stars-we-steer-by/