Covid Lessons?

The thing about this Covid-19 menace is that, in addition to threatening your health and life, it also is supposedly teaching you lessons. A strand of RNA clad in a protein sheath is the new guru to the modern world. On all sorts of things ranging from the benefits of a work-from-home culture to the planet to the benefits of spending time with family; from the realization of which professionals the world truly needs to the realization of the hollowness of a material culture; even from the powerlessness of human beings against an enraged Nature to the worth of a rich inner life compared to a rich external life. Back to school again...and I never did like learning.

You know, this reminds me of the time I went on a diet. (Oh, yes, I did. There WAS a time when I too indulged in the futile endeavor of trying to exchange a beer barrel for a six-pack!) It was a 15 day diet, so I gritted and bore it, dreaming every day of all the goodies I would eat once the diet had ended and waking up to a pillow wet with drool. AND, when the diet ended, there was this huge eating spree as though I was in a hurry to put back on all the weight I supposedly lost during that period of semi-starvation.

THAT, then, is the issue with these Covid lessons. If you grit and bear it, waiting for the lock-down to end so that you can get back to your 'normal' life, what exactly are going to be the lasting effects? Exactly the same as my diet had on my weight. If anything, the damn thing INCREASED.

The point about learning lessons relating to behavior and attitudes (NOT facts, like what 5 x 3 works out to. You can grit and bear it or enjoy it, you could still learn the FACT)  is that you need to EMBRACE the experience, see what in the new way of life seems better to you compared to what used to be. THEN you possibly could learn from it, adopt a modified way of life going forth. If, instead, you see it as a detestable temporary interregnum in your 'normal' life, when the time comes you will revert back to your normal life with a vengeance.

Of course, even if you DO grit and bear it, your life can still change. But THAT will happen only if it lasts for long enough for it to become the new normal for you. Which is HOW humanity has always changed. By being dragged kicking and screaming into a new way of life because the old one is irretrievably gone. Especially where the new way of life does not make things MORE convenient to you.

So, yes, these Covid lessons will stick only to the extent that some changes in the way of life have been proved MORE convenient than before. OR if it lasts long enough for it to become the new normal. Otherwise, it will be largely business as usual, once the problem is no longer visibly serious.

THAT's the reality of humanity. We never learn just from experience. Only if there is an immediate carrot or stick!