Crazy Times

It’s a beautiful day here on this 2020 Mother’s Day.

The world seems so green and lush and healthy with the deep blue of a clear sky, the yellow rays of sunlight and the colours of the flowers springing up through the ground.

It’s hard to believe the world is sick.

Well, not the planet - but the global population of humans that inhabit our world remain under a stay in place isolation order of varying degrees.

It’s crazy.

You’re living through all of this too, so I won’t bore you with those details you already know.

As for our little family, a lot has changed.

My wife Darlene and I have have separated now for two years, amicably and there is no reason for anyone to shed a tear on our behalf, as it has a been a very positive experience for all.

My two little girls - Alannah and Ashley-Rae are now 19 and almost 18 respectively and have both become quite accomplished young women in their own rights.

And some eight months ago I met one of the most special people I have ever known and fallen madly in love with her in the process.

During the last nine weeks of pandemic self-isolation I have been working from home, my laptop set up with three monitors and a keyboard in the corner of the living room, with the honour and pleasure of working with a fantastic team on one of the most exciting projects of my career - using Microsoft Teams and Zoom to collaborate we meet online several times a day.

Alannah has successfully completed her first year of college, and Ashley-Rae participates in online classes and course material for the remainder of her senior year. If anyone in our house has suffered from the self-isolation mandate during this pandemic it has been Ashley-Rae. Her Senior Year Prom cancelled, her final year of both high school softball and dance team competitions eliminated, she, like most other high school seniors is constantly impacted by a string of disappointments.

The next disappointment is likely to be the cancelation of this summer’s travel fast-pitch softball schedule. The majority of the team’s schedule slated to play in both Michigan and Ohio in a time when the opening of the U.S. - Canada border to non-essential traffic seems highly unlikely until at least the fall, it appears apparent that this season will be another casualty,

Given my age nearing sixty, my daughters have mandated I do stay home - no shopping - no visiting - except to visit Jackie and her daughter Mackenzie - who is the same age as my two daughters - I am now homebound.

I’ll admit I spend a lot of time with Jackie, either at her beautiful home a few miles away, or here at our modest little homestead.

But there is so much unsettled in our world right now.

There are a lot of questions that will be decided by the laws of economics as the world awaits the opportunity to reopen after this shut down.

Will we ever return to a normal office work-life again is will it be the new norm to work from home? Given that there will likely be a six-foot separation rule when businesses try to move back their traditional workplaces - will that reduced optimization of office space make I cheaper to have staff work at home? What will the productivity rates of people working from home be?What will these shifts really mean to our local, provincial, national and global economies?

Will we ever enjoy going to restaurants, movie theatres, shopping malls and such places ever again? What happens to music concerts and professional sports events now?

Or will we simply open up and go back to life exactly as we left it?

To me, it comes down to confidence levels - at several levels. From the global level to open up borders depending on national confidence levels, the more local levels to determine what the safest number of people to gather in one place will be, and our individual confidence that interacting with our world is safe enough yet.

But certainly there is still great opportunities out there for those who have the skills to chase them. We are already seeing some - such as delivery services - from food to purchases - even entertainment. And the realization that we reached our technology level just in time.

And other new opportunities will arise - the most notable in my mind is to offer the skill to help companies and corporations figure out how they will pivot their business practices to survive in this new world.

But will we see the end of professional sports? The end of arena sized music and entertainment concerts? The Theatre? Will we ever again celebrate events with parades and fireworks? And how can the way we take care of our senior citizens change - because nursing homes and long term care facilities definitely need to be overhauled.

What can we afford to do?

Who knows? I don’t. But I suspect we will never again be able to feel comfortable in large crowds - at least not without masks and gloves?

But I think it’s safe to say that if your industry supports health care, delivery of goods, or any kind of internet based transactions or home improvement services, you are likely to boom after this. But manufacturing has no option but to further automate using robotics.

Our world - I believe - will be different.

And I hope that the impact to your world is more positive than negative.

The next question though - when this is all over - will be “did we handle this right?” A lot of retrospective about self isolation and personal distancing will happen - after the crisis - after we are immunized - if we are ever immunized. There will be a lot of finger pointing and blaming. And the current great divide between the left and the right will likely grow larger - as will the divide between the have’s and have not’s. And conspiracy theories - already appearing - will fire dispute in that each will claim that the other is lying or covering something up.

And the scientists will be monitoring closely how this incredible reduction in human activity has allowed this planet we live on to heal. That should be interesting. Or even more concerning - depending on what we find out.

It’s bound to happen.

It’s who we are.

And these are crazy times.

Rolling Around the Sun

This big blue waterlogged rock of ours keeps spinning around the sun.

I guess this means that time just keeps moving forward, one second after the previous one. Baby steps along.

It did so before we got here. It will continue to do so after we leave.

I find time so fascinating. It is the only man made invention that was here before we got here and will continue long after we are gone to no longer measure it. Even long after our water logged rock and our blazing sun. Even after the Milky Way galaxy that our sun orbits is gone.

It hurts my brain to think about this.

Time that I am speaking of is the measurement of consecutive moments and knowing where we are in that measurement.

Others – much smarter than I – talk about it as an entity – relationship with and a dependency on gravity. The stronger the density of gravity – the quicker time passes – supposedly proven by using atomic clocks to compare time between the earth’s highest peaks and at sea level, several nanoseconds of difference between the two.

Is that really proof, or a flaw in the mechanics of an atomic clock?

I think of this as people I know and love pass away. It’s part of that conceptual question of “what happens when we die?”

Do we continue to exist? Or is it the same thing as turning off and unplugging the living room lamp?

Well, I certainly am no Einstein.

But all things of nature are so perfectly designed. Perfectly balanced. Perfectly fit to fulfill a role. Leaves on trees stretch out to receive the sun, or collect the rain. Seeds from those trees dispersed by wind or animal or both to extend be reborn after the parent tree dies, and rots away, becoming the nutrients needed for the next generation of all things around it.

So why would our being – our soul – be any different?

We have no math to prove it. No scientific experiment to shed even a hope. We do have legends, and antidotal accounts that demand it is true. Our religions tell us it is true. But we have nothing scientific to back it up.

Our existence on this planet, our cognitive awareness that we are here and our interaction with the world and the thoughts – thoughts is the key word – our perception of what we see and smell and taste and feel, combined with our emotional responses – that’s what makes us … us.

It’s brilliant. So if everything else produced by nature is regenerated again – lakes to gas to clouds to rain to water as food to lakes again as an example why would we just assume that the lights go off when we die?

That seems too easy an answer. But scientifically it is the only conclusion we can make so far.

We have no data to support anything else.

I used to have a boss named Bob. Bob would never say that we didn’t know anything or couldn’t do anything without adding the word “yet” to the end of the sentence. It was always a challenge to learn. The subtle instruction was “go figure it out”.

I loved working for Bob.

And I don’t believe the lights go off at the end. Maybe our consciousness doesn’t continue in a manner that remembers the existences before – maybe it all gets rewired – re-used somehow. Maybe we do get planted elsewhere. Around and around again and again – waiting for the right opportunity to develop to exist.

Just like our big rock spinning around the sun, once molten lava, then drenched with water, then frozen, then thawed, then green with life and then the next thing – whatever it may be. And whatever it may be again after that. And after that again.

We just really don’t know … yet.

And before I close this – please do not pummel me with comments about heaven or hell or reincarnation. Those are ideas, perhaps even theories. And their truth to you is directly related to the amount of faith you have in those beliefs.

I am not here to debate or even question your faith. Honest.

I’m just reiterating that as a collective, we don’t know …

Yet.

But when we pass away, then will we know?

I sure hope so.