I woke to brilliantly blue skies this morning, after hours of gloomy, icy rain yesterday, so set out on an early walk to enjoy the forsythia and cherry blossoms. A block from home, I ‘came to’ and realized that I was heedlessly walking along the length of sidewalk where I fell two months ago today. I have superstitiously avoided the spot ever since, but forgot all about it this morning — for, like most humans currently alive on the planet, my fears are now focused on the coronavirus.
Analyzing my mental landscape, I suppose I’m not actively anxious, not often anyway, and indeed why would I be? I am blessedly, unjustly insulated from the worst threats the pandemic is dishing out. It seems unlikely I will get sick (if I escaped the virus while commuting on mass transit and working in a crowded office), and nor do my friends and relations seem in danger medically. It’s likely I’ll be able to continue working and drawing my salary, though I am concerned for my financially vulnerable family and friends. I do wonder how long I’ll have to postpone retirement in the wake of an inevitable worldwide recession, but that’s a mild, theoretical issue in comparison to nearly every other one the world currently faces.
But even the luckiest among us now operate against a backdrop of uncertainty, which exposes our fragility and the unknowability of the future. Of course, the fact is that we were always fragile, and our futures are always hidden, but the pandemic has distilled and concentrated these phenomena into palpable and inescapable reality.
Honestly I am heartily sick of the lessons the universe seems to need to teach me in 2020!
Linnetontheleaf 
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