Suffering

Suffering – noun   the state of a person or thing that suffers.

Often sufferings. Something suffered by a person or a group of people; pain.

     I am suffering. I imagine you are too. My wish is that your suffering isn’t too horrible and that things will get better for you soon. Of course there are degrees of suffering and each of us handles our “bad” times differently. Some internalize, some rant and rave, some try to find deeper meaning in it. Some point fingers and search desperately to identify where the blame belongs. I’m a firm believer in doing whatever (short of harming others) helps you get through it to that other, brighter side.

     I’ve been having trouble understanding why we don’t seem to be able to suspend our lives for whatever time it takes for us to get through this pandemic. It’s a sacrifice, for sure. It’s a hardship, absolutely. It’s disruptive and complicated and discouraging. But mostly, it’s necessary. It’s imperative. If you are a human being, it’s an obligation we all owe for enjoying the privilege of living in these United States.

     I’ve been reminded these last several months of the sacrifices everyone made during the Second World War from scrap metal drives to help build ships and planes and armaments to rationing flour, sugar and meat to giving up nylon stockings. I’m sure people complained but we were a nation united working for a common goal. Every sacrifice was somehow aiding the war effort. The effort made by each person was personal. Nothing “given up” was more important than knowing it was helping someone’s husband or wife or sister or brother or son or daughter to come home safely. However I’ve also come to the realization that too much time has passed between those events and these. Many seniors will remember what it was like but I only know about it second-hand because I asked my parents and grandmother. My grandmother knit socks and folded parachutes, even while she was dealing with a broken arm. But she had four sons serving their country so no sacrifice, no job was too much for her to bear. Her sons were depending on her.

     The fact is if this pandemic had been handled competently with more honesty and if the public had been told the truth sooner, we wouldn’t be in this position. If there had been clear mandates about masks and distancing, we wouldn’t be in this situation. If there hadn’t been unrealistic pressures to “re-open” too soon, 200,000 persons wouldn’t be dead with no sign the numbers will significantly drop anytime soon. While more is known about how the virus acts, what the consequences are, how long the effects last, not enough is known to throw caution to the wind and resume the old ways before the pandemic. We have no vaccine yet or for the foreseeable future.

     I’ve also wondered what the line in the sand is, what your price is, how much will you excuse or turn a blind-eye to before it’s too much or has gone too far. Keep in mind that loyalty is a TWO-WAY street. Be loyal, by all means, but be sure that loyalty is reciprocated equally and honestly. Rhetoric is rhetoric regardless of who is spouting it. Hypocrisy too. If you are passing judgment on someone no matter what the reason but giving a pass to someone else who’s doing the exact same thing because of how  friends or your family think, well, that’s hypocrisy and it’s wrong. If thinking only 200,000 dead isn’t that many out of 310,000,000+, you are certainly entitled to feel that way but then stop. Remember, they could just as easily be your father, mother, sister, brother, grandmother, grandfather, son, daughter, aunt, uncle, cousin or friend who gets infected next and makes 200,001. Would that be over your line? Too much to pay? Yet something else you turn a blind eye to? Be careful here because you may have to live with that decision.

     I wear my mask. It isn’t always comfortable and if I have to walk a lot, I sometimes feel like I can’t catch my breath. But I will wear it for those around me, for my husband and for me. If I knowingly caused someone I know to get sick and die, I couldn’t live with the knowledge that I was responsible for someone else’s death because of my selfishness. I socially distance even when others don’t know what six feet looks like. It isn’t this🤏.

     This will one day be over. But it won’t be over this month or next or this year. It will be over when it’s over. I pray life will be changed, we will be changed, our hearts will be changed. We’ll realize we are more alike than disparate. That living in harmony makes more sense than being divided. Busily working together toward common goals instead of millions of separate, non-productive ones is more valuable. That we all have value, period. We are all worthwhile, worth knowing, worth caring for and about. What I’m more weary of than wearing a mask or keeping my distance is being ideologically divided as a country. I look forward to being together, again.