Tag Archives: pandemic

The Beauty of a Broken Record Is the Skipping

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Noons and nights. Suns and shadows. Rise and rest.

Well before the mind-numbing repetition of the pandemic clock dictated our daily existence, we slid from week to week, slaves to the schedule. We were wind-up toys wobbling in the waves of whatever felt like an accepted societal standard of a “good day’s work,” and we celebrated our victories by planting flags in some piece of future soil to mark a personal milestone or forever honor an arbitrary date of achievement. With fingers crossed and blinders fastened, we strove toward a fantastical finish line in some desperate hope for the fleeting opportunity to take a knee and finally catch our collective breath.

The needle dropped…and the record spun.

Resetting back to one, we built a fresh blueprint to pursue an even more impressive objective. A greater goal worthy of our newly acquired skill set…and all those gains gleaned from the grind.

But there is always a higher peak to summit. A wider chasm to traverse. Hotter coals to cross.

So, when we are presented with an opportunity to shatter the monotonous glass—even if we can only muster a few cracks in the corners—it’s important to let those shards fall. There is a deep release felt from the freedom of cutting reins and remembering how to run on our own two feet.

A lifted needle dragging along bumpy vinyl on a tilted table is specifically built to help us remember what sits in the cracks between the tracks.

Leave the broom in the closet. Watch the translucent time pirates sit helplessly in heaps on the floor.

Let the song skip.

Adolescence Interrupted

Around the Next Corner

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The most unexpected twists and turns of life arrive with the surprise of a shotgun blast. But the persistent pace of the ever-chasing tortoise is what ultimately helps dry the wet concrete of the foundation beneath our feet.

This very human inability to predict the future is what keeps us driving toward the possibility of a fresh start with every sunrise. If we were to possess a thorough comprehension of our trajectories, that inherent knowledge alone would influence the outcome of decisions and choices we didn’t even know we were making.

So we’re left to wander through these incredibly short lives blindfolded, with arms outstretched and fingers splayed, searching for the grasp of something solid to help steady the spin. Day after day, we turn blank pages in a book waiting to be written, occasionally penning a line or two before we lose the light.

But consistent tenacity is the key. Sometimes simply staying in the game is enough to claim victory. We are not able to forecast the arrival of a rainbow after the rain. So the opportunity to write a new chapter might surface far later than expected.

It would have been inconceivable to envision this beautifully balanced Sunshine State existence while I was in the excruciatingly painful throes of those LA migraines. I spent countless nights searching in vain for any semblance of a glimmer in those infinitely, frightfully dark tunnels.

We can’t see what’s waiting just around the next corner.

The hopeless global desperation experienced by millions of people during this pandemic is further evidence of our supremely frustrating lack of clairvoyance.

It may not have slowed the spread or saved the dying, but a kernel of hope that help was on the way could have delivered the most basic and most lacking resource…perspective.

There’s a reason our planet swims to the current of a constant clock. We like to mark our starts and stops.

Take that away and the blindfold gets a little tighter.

Adolescence Interrupted

Delay the Blame

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“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”  —LC

Leonard Cohen was right. But maybe that’s how the truth sneaks in as well. In an age of finger-pointing panic, saddling innocent necks with a concocted albatross feels like an exercise in sweaty futility.

Punching someone else in the mouth to alleviate your own toothache is psychotically pointless, and we are witnessing a disturbing cycle of dangerously misplaced condemnations in the form of false attributions.

Clean hands are too often tarnished and soiled by the stream of mud and muck spewed from the mouths of rabid believers desperate for vengeance. Idiots search for scapegoats in a world that has turned its back on their illogical ignorance, and they’re running out of easy targets.

Unforgivable violence as an outlet for the bottled frustration, isolation, and loss that have permeated the population is not going to stop the spread, clear the lungs, or bring back the dead. Sidewalk assaults, venomous threats, and racial slurs only fuel internal fires. So maybe it’s time to spin that mirror and explore some page-turning solutions—as opposed to bullet-spitting blame without scientific proof or justification.

The sneaky little secret that no one likes to share is that it’s not about race. It’s about disgusting food manufacturing and the ugly, unquenchable consumption of innocent, sentient beings. As long as we continue the barbaric practice of wet markets and turn a blind eye to the perilous commingling of humans and animals, we are at constant risk of viral outbreaks.

That’s a much longer discussion, best suited for another post.

But if we don’t take a drastic collective turn as a people and a planet, I recommend we start seeing this pandemic as simply one in a line, not one in a million. 

Adolescence Interrupted

A Panglossian Perspective

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“Your end can be greater than your beginning: butterflies are the greatest proof of this.” —Matshona Dhliwayo

The thaw on the heels of a freeze. A rainbow following a storm. Resets and restarts. There is a beauty and certain merit in the gift of a new beginning.

Cleaning slates can achieve more than neat stockpiles of dust generated by rote eraser smashing. For all the effort involved in the grind, the result is a smooth, sharp edge. As our eyes start to squint from the glare of an unfamiliar sun, there’s a chance to see what’s changed while we were away.

With a significant (albeit temporary) reduction in carbon emissions, the planet was able to take a deep collective breath, without choking on the exhaust from a billion daily tailpipes slingshotting between home and work. The solution? Home=work…and it’s not that tough.

A nonsense-free workspace shone a spotlight on the delays and distractions inherent in an office setting. It’s impressive what people can accomplish when left alone to focus on a task. Increased opportunities for mindfulness, meditation, and achieving a better work-life balance replaced idling on a gridlocked freeway, wondering what happened to an already-tenuous grip on sanity.

But the most obvious gift we’ve been granted in this past pandemic year is the smack in the teeth of perspective. What matters and what doesn’t? The global population was left to ponder which relationships were worth preserving, which hobbies and activities warranted the necessary time commitment, and how to best live life on a loop.

Introverts soared, propelled by lighter wings and limitless air, while extroverts crashed under the burden of unattainable energy reserves, held just out of reach by isolated friends behind social prison bars.

Those who craved connection were glued to substandard Zoom chats and a perpetual battle against the glitch. The best-laid intentions for daily commiseration sessions soon became weekly, monthly, and then nonexistent.

But using the sting and pain of the present as brick and mortar for better days, we can stack the necessary blocks to avoid building a road to repetition. Lessons are only valuable when learned, and this is a prime opportunity to put into practice some real, tangible change.

The list of what’s on that docket is a volume too extensive to tackle in this condensed format, but the opportunity for metamorphosis has presented itself, here and now.

Static caterpillar or unbound butterfly? Choose wisely.

Adolescence Interrupted

Unclog the Drain

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“It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.”    —Dalai Lama

A country cowering in the corner of a storm drain and hiding from the impending hurricane by practicing almost unfathomable acts of social irresponsibility and shortsighted selfishness is a nation ripe for ridicule and condemnation by its global neighbors.

Sadly, the current pandemic is merely the pinpoint tip of an iceberg with titanic frozen roots, sitting at a depth scraping the seabed. Placing every pressing issue in the back seat of a brakeless car fueled by a narrow focus on some imaginary, concocted finish line—solely to benefit personal desires or ambitions—is beyond dangerous. It’s deadly.

We are reluctantly reaping what we’ve sown, regretting our batch and wishing we buried a different seed. But this toxic crop is precisely what we deserve, and the consequences of our actions have taken the shape of daily force-fed attrition.

Diseased, tortured Frankensteinian animals mass-produced as sustenance and left alone to rot in cages. Stock market manipulation to pack the pockets of people least deserving of the spoils. Blatant refusal to don masks at the expense of vulnerable elderly lungs desperately trying to survive a cloud of venomous vapor.

Every individual act of toe-shooting defiance is just a bullet in the head of the greater good.

Maybe you’ll be rescued by a vaccine. Maybe you won’t.

But patterns played out over time eventually lead to concrete, unchangeable results. If we continue to walk a path of least resistance—protecting our self-interests above those of the collective—and stunt the organic flow of nature’s blueprint, we will be met with far fiercer foes than coronaviruses.

We are not left without choice or free will, so selecting selfishness above selflessness is an insensitive slap in the face of humanity.

There will be debts to pay tomorrow for what is spent today.

Adolescence Interrupted

A Generation Modified

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“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”    —Jiddu Krishnamurti

Life locked behind windows and doors.

A new reality. A new planet. A new challenge.

An opportunity to do it right this time.

Developing minds are being asked to trade outside stimuli and ordinary social interactions for a brief glimpse at grandma on a small, shaking screen or distracted learning from remote educators saddled with unfair expectations and dwindling patience for throwing blindfolded darts at moving targets.

Still, the anti-quarantine protests and a deadly desire to dive back into “normal” life dominate the headlines. If we were all in mutual agreement with some widely accepted notion that the world we constructed was normal, I think it’s time for a better blueprint.

The growing chasm of wealth disparity is threatening to hobble established empires, the planet’s resources are irresponsibly plundered to fill the coffers of selfishly shortsighted puppet masters of profit, and we remain numb to the impending downfall by affixing our eyeballs to screens that constantly, cleverly administer just enough dope (and dopamine) to keep us begging for the chance to be repeat customers.

But there is hope. The next generation has a bullshit detector the likes of which we’ve never seen, and it won’t bow at the altar of blind acquiescence. It is deeply feeling the effects of this pandemic, and that code is being imprinted and branded on impressionable, malleable mental motherboards. Lessons for the future are being ingested in the present.

Those in power better seize this final opportunity to blatantly misallocate vital financial resources, sacrifice the sick who are too scared, too poor, or too alone to save themselves, and take one last lap around that privileged scotch circle. Your cigar-stained fingers are raising a glass in celebration of your own demise.

Adolescence Interrupted

Scales Without Balance

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“If we think of life as a kind of Olympic games, some of life’s crises are sprints. They require maximum emotional concentration for a short time. Then they are over, and life returns to normal. But other crises are distance events. They ask us to maintain our concentration over a much longer period of time, and that can be a lot harder.”                                                                                                    —Harold S. Kushner

I am deeply troubled these days. I’m blinded by unjust suffering on a global scale and I watch the escalating pain of family and friends from a very personal perspective.

How did our calibration fall so far out of balance? Why must genuinely sweet souls be forced to endure sustained agony while those with evil, black hearts are permitted to swim free in a sea of avarice and insensitivity?

I will never understand the fundamental human hardwiring that values greed and excess over common decency and the general welfare of others. It is a pandemic virus without a cure, and it’s systematically infecting our brains with frightening speed and alarming accuracy.

So…why do bad things happen to good people? Is there really no karmic system in place to level the playing field? Is everything simply randomized chaos without even the hint of some justified cause or effect?

This nightmarish scenario certainly frames society in a context that would cause the vast majority to squirm in their seats, and that’s not even taking into account the titanic religious implications in the lives of those who truly believe there is a grand master plan at play.

As hard as it might be to wrap your head around the fact that we’ll probably not get to the roots of the “meaning of life” debate during this short post, it’s worth considering that our own backyards are the only ones we can clean, and acts of kindness and generosity can easily be distributed one day (and to one person) at a time.

Your pain is never as severe as someone else’s. Your financial situation is never as dire. But your success is never as impressive, and your status is merely an illusion devised by your artificially-inflated ego.

Take a step back and take a step down. We are forgoing a sense of community and compassion at a disturbingly breakneck pace. It might be wise to take stock of what’s truly important…before it’s all lost.

Adolescence Interrupted