Post script to ‘Enjoying the Ride’

“For the want of a shoe.........”

Gareth read the piece I posted today (‘Enjoying the Ride’) and asked me where I was going with it. Fair question, I suppose. I’d been wondering about whether I really am negative in the way my son says I am. His observation was made in a conversation we were having about what the future holds for the children and I confess, it’s something I worry about. I haven’t seen much recently to give me faith in humanity’s survival value, much as I would hope that we can survive, and in a world that we have nurtured back to good health. I do therefore feel it important to convey the urgency of our need not to return to the old normal, but when I do, my reasoning seems to create anxiety for my loved ones. I don’t want to scare them so what’s the best thing for me to do? All I can do, it seems, is hang on to hope, my stubborn optimism, and give love.

Dog daisies

Enjoying the ride

My son tells me I’m rather negative. Hmmm - I thought I was practising ‘stubborn optimism’. 

Pause for thought, then.

My last blog certainly doesn’t reflect much optimism and I’m still having weird, often scary, dreams. Am I anxious? If I am I’m not aware of being so. As I told Owen - I think life is a wonderful gift; a great adventure. We don’t know what’s in store for us, what’s around the next corner, what it’s all about......but it’s an adventure nevertheless.

The other day I was trying to recall the potted wisdoms that my forebears would present as answers to a worry or calamity. One that makes me smile as being the epitome of stoicism is “Well, this is what you find”. A friend reminded me of another version - “It is what it is”. My paternal grandmother was an eternal optimist and would always calm a worry with “It’ll all turn out right in the end” (we never questioned what ‘the end’ might be). “Live and let live” is another one. These ancestors were all church or chapel goers. 

My father, while also innately optimistic, was a bit of a heretic, like his own father, and would say “Cheer up! We’ll soon be dead”, and laugh, of course. If I were to parrot that in a pandemic I would definitely be seen as a doom-mongerer.

And so what if I am? 

It’s the last day of June as I write, and we’ve been in lockdown here in Wales for over three months. There’s been a bit of loosening up; nothing like the loosening in England, but out and about you wouldn’t think there was much of a lockdown at all. Since Cummings-gate (as it’s become known) a great many people have abandoned social distancing, mask-wearing and restricting their travel. Recently a bus full of Londoners had to be turned around at one of our local CLOSED beach car parks! On the same (admittedly hot) day some youngsters looking for somewhere to party arrived on our beach here having travelled from Cardiff, well outside their five mile limit. Littering day trippers are arriving regularly and in greater numbers. If they are following the rule of ‘two households only’ some of these households must be pretty well populated!

So, we are living with the virus, some of us still exercising common-sense (whatever that amounts to), some of us in stubborn denial and some quaking anxiously in their homes. The UK is coming out as the worst in all measures in terms of infection and death rates compared with other first world countries. What a tribute to our Brexit-focussed, Boris Johnson-led government! Not!

Through the virtual window we’ve seen a great deal happening out there in the wider world. There have been regular mass “Black Lives Matter” protests (some mask-wearing, but....) and statue toppling (any historical figure associated with racism and the slave trade). Elon Musk’s manned space-craft launched safely and arrived at the Space Station. Non-essential shops opened across the UK and people queued for hours to get into places like Primark and IKEA (WHY?). In the ‘small print’ atrocities continue in places like Yemen and Myanmar, stories about trade deals, corruption and Climate Change receiving little attention. I’ve given up shouting about such things on social media, giving Facebook a wider berth after being offered badges for following particular sources. What the heck! (I would put a stronger expletive there, but....)

So, ‘this is what you find’, or ‘it is what it is’. Maybe ‘it will all turn out right in the end’, and I’ll ‘cheer up because we’ll soon be dead’. I don’t think I’m negative. I’m stubbornly optimistic that all is as it should be and I’m just going to continue enjoying the ride, scary dreams and all.

Happy thoughts?

What if the plane of humanity, earthly life itself, even, is going down? How do we spend those last minutes of existence.

Right now, it seems that First Class has shut the door to keep out the babble and commotions from the rest of the plane. They continue to enjoy being waited on with champagne and caviar.

It’s not as though the problem hadn’t been noticed early on and those that noticed have been doing their best to mobilise others to help fix the problem. They’ve been mocked and dismissed as fear-mongers as always happens when someone disturbs the peace by raising an alarm. “Look, the sky is blue and we’ve never before had such an easy ride. Stop with your story of doom! Sit down and let us enjoy the film” is the general response.

But there are pockets of great unease on the plane, too. Arguments are breaking out. People clutch their wallets, handbags and children seeing things getting nasty. People are fighting each other for things that won’t matter a jot when this monstrous human edifice hits the ground. Panic hasn’t quite broken out yet, but the flight is feeling different. Something isn’t right. Most aren’t hearing the call to do something, the alcohol is very relaxing, but there are some looking to fix things. Inevitably, because we are humans, there is no agreement on what the problem is and how to fix it, so the efforts are unco-ordinated. 

What is the pilot and crew doing? Is there a pilot? Is there someone in the cockpit wrestling to keep this mega-plane in the air or is it someone with a deeply sinister death wish? Are they all dead in there? The door to the cockpit is tightly shut and the rest of us are flying passively and blind, going down.

I hope, of course, that life as we know it is not going down like a massive plane crash, but if it is, and the way we are behaving so far is just as I describe - how should we spend those last minutes?