After This?

Sometimes I try to envision what our lives will be like coming out of this. I believe that eventually, once there's a vaccine and treatment, they will be somewhat the same. More chastened, more grateful, I hope, but similar to what we used to have. People are social creatures, after all. We want to be together.

But until we feel safe doing that, we will wear masks and stay mostly to ourselves. This is a poverty. It's a shrinking of our lives rather than an expansion of them. It's hard to stay aware of all the possibilities the world holds while we're in this cloistered state.

The life we had is a world I miss every day; we all do. A world we lost so quickly, almost with the hair-trigger quickness of a bomb exploding. All it took was a wily, tenacious pathogen.

What I hope most of all is that this pathogen, like so much else, doesn't succeed in pushing us farther apart, but instead pulls us together. All evidence suggests that it will split us up. But I'm an optimist; I like to believe that common sense and human kindness will prevail.