Time and Gratitude in the Midst of COVID-19

There’s something surreal about living through events that will go down in history. I know we all feel it right now — this sense of living out lives that should only be the subject of dystopian novels and history books documenting people who existed long before us.

In 20 or 30 or 50 years, children will have to memorise the events of the “2020 Coronavirus Pandemic”. As it has unfolded so far, we know there will be tragedy written about in those textbooks. Death, economic hardship, hoarding. “Which household item caused physical brawls in Australian grocery stores?” That might be a question in a future modern history test. Though the rest of the chapter — how much despair, what the other side will look like, and what we will learn along the way remains uncertain.

Right now, somehow, someway, this is our lives. And although my attitude is generally bleak about our short-term future in Australia, I try to remind myself to be positive. Eventually, this too will pass, and father time Kronos will resume the flow of minutes, days and hours at a normal pace.

At the end of it all, we will pick up the pieces. And maybe, just maybe, we will ask ourselves what we have learned in this strange time — as a nation, as a community, as a generation, as individuals. Some contend that we will awaken from this societal hibernation with a new world order. Certainly, things will not be the same.

And as much as there is fear, and uncertainty, and concern and frustration and all these…