Who would have guessed that the things that make us most human would one day also put us at serious risk? Things like our basic, interactive existential humanity, for example.
And who would have realized that, even though we can recognize it intellectually, it’s so hard to act practically and break with old habits?
Your neighbour calls to let you know he’s got extra compost, and you’re welcome to it. He even offers to drop it off, and drives over with a trailer behind his ATV to drop it off. You know all about physical distancing — of course you do — you practise it all the time at the grocery store. But, next thing you know, you can’t just watch him unload it all by himself, and you’re out there with your own shovel, working shoulder to shoulder, talking about the weather, when you realize …
Outside the hardware store, everyone’s patiently waiting in line. Only a certain number of people allowed in the store at a time, the staff’s really thorough, and people are being carefully counted. But there aren’t actual lines on the pavement to show the full distance customers should stay apart as they wait. Bit by bit, inch by inch, the line slowly settles into the usual and comfortable space that people are used to, until you realize “This isn’t two metres at all” …
You see someone from your street struggling with their oversized garbage cart, trying to get it back up a steep driveway, and you’ve stepped off the sidewalk, onto their driveway, and are on your way to give them a hand — you get the picture.
This is tough. It’s tough enough because there are some among us who are unwilling to take even what are now basic precautions — frequent hand-washing, maintaining proper distances, wearing masks for our own health and the health of others if those distances can’t be maintained. There are even those who seem unable to manage something as simple as figuring out what the direction arrows mean in grocery store aisles, despite explanatory signs right at eye level.
It’s even tougher because it sometimes feels callous and rude and, well, antisocial.
But plenty of us are trying.
Two steps forwards, one step back: a sunny day comes, one of the first few where you can actually feel the heat baking into your skin, and it’s so wonderful to be in a park, on the grass, and everybody just wants a little bit of that same feeling. Like dough rising in the warm corner, the number of people in the park gets bigger and bigger until it crosses the line into too many for a pandemic — but no alarm goes off. No warning lights flash.
We’re new at this. All of us.
But we can keep trying to do it properly. For our own good.
