What If The Pandemic Had Never Happened?

Do you like playing the "What if" game?  

I do, sometimes.  Saturday and Sunday were one of those times.

I went to a county wide Art Trail, where various artists open up their studios to visitors, or display their creations in venues such as museums.

A flower arrangement created before our eyes

There was even a flower arranging class, taught by a creative woman I hadn't seen since before COVID.

Yes, that expression we all use so casually now.

"Before COVID".  We all know exactly what it means.

It was the time of nothing being what we had planned it to be.

Over this weekend, talking to some of the artists (and overhearing other conversations) the pandemic lockdown was mentioned time and again by the artists.  I heard a lot of "I had a lot of time to think/to work on a certain project/I had time to reconsider where my life was going."  There were career changes.  There were new ways of expressing themselves. 

I also know many others didn't have that time to think.  First responders didn't.  Health care workers didn't.  Teachers.  Farmers. Essential workers. Parents of school age children.  They didn't.  All of us, though, learned lessons about how fragile life is, and how life laughs at our plans.

It was a valuable lesson.

For me, I think of it as being moved to another track in the journey of life.  Pre-pandemic, I was planning to retire in April of 2020.  I planned to go to the senior center.  I planned to snowbird in Florida.  I was going to do volunteer work.

Those plans.  It all seems like it's a million miles away now. 

I retired but went right back to (part time, same job but at home) work. Why not? It was a way to keep in touch with people I had known for years.

I never signed up for volunteer work after all.  I didn't go to a senior center, not once not even when they opened back up (which took a long time where I live in New York State).

Last month, I went back into the office for the first time since COVID.  I ended up going in twice, because I couldn't get through all the boxes I needed to go through on day one.

One of my regular readers asked me what I found, so here we go.

The once noisy open space was still open, but it was quiet.  We are still spaced to be apart from each other, and many of us are still working from home full time, or are hybrid (working in both places).  It was almost too quiet.

The boxes awaited me.

I ended up tossing much of what was in the boxes, but I had to look through everything first.  I scanned what I felt needed to be scanned, so we could refer to these items electronically.  We hadn't missed much of what I had boxed up in those three years (my department's floor was being remodeled when COVID hit, so I had actually packed in the fall of 2019, when we moved into temporary quarters.) 

I also found out I missed the office in some ways.  I talked (in person! not on a screen!) to several people I used to see several times a week, or more.  Some were working full time (or that day) in the office.  Some, like me, had been called in to go through their boxes and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. 

There was an electricity in the air.  An energy.  An energy that could almost be touched.

My final impression?  "It was weird.  But good."

I understand now what the people who want their employees back in the office are talking about, although I don't agree with them forcing employees back. But, on the other hand, I do not want to go back to the way it was.  I'm not the same person I was on March 19, 2020.

So, what if the pandemic had never happened?  There are many very bad things happening all around us.  Many people seem to have lost their basic manners, their social behavior, even their very humanity.  COVID was a huge social experiment.  We won't know the final outcome for years.

As horrible as COVID was (and still is - make no mistake, it's still with us) it has changed all our lives. Sometimes tragically.  Sometimes, for the good.

Change is hard.  Some of us try to go back to March 2020, the way it was.  I think we should carefully pick and choose.  There was good mixed in with the bad.

Sometimes, we need to be pushed beyond our comfort zone.

As the saying goes, "it is what it is".  I hope we can all move forward eventually, to a better tomorrow.

The alternative is too terrible to imagine.