Interesting times
The Japanese have a reputation for being an unfailingly polite culture. As such even their insults and curses tend to be less of the four-letter variety and incline more toward the euphemistic.
One of their most grievous curses, so I am told, roughly translates as “may you live in interesting times.” When I was a younger man, I often wondered what could be so bad about interesting times.
Well, in the last couple of years I think we have all learned a little something about living in “Interesting times.” Between a worldwide pandemic, wide ranging civil unrest, supply chain breakdowns, and the most divisive politics in a generation, things have certainly been interesting.
This country has been through worse of course, from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement, the United States has seen its share of struggle and heartache, but it’s been a long time. Things have been fairly stable for the last four or five decades. Maybe we were taking too much for granted.
The year 2020 started out rather positive. Yes, politics were a mess, but here in the real-world things were okay. More or less. At that time, no one could have foreseen how interesting the next couple of years would be. We heard rumors of this virus from overseas, but we did not take it seriously until businesses started closing and we ran out of toilet paper. We struggled to get by, and we wondered how long it would last. We came to understand the official definition of what an essential worker is. I think we also came to
understand how many workers we took for granted.
Interesting times for sure. Sometimes we remember milestones, things that have never happened before, at least not in our lifetime. For myself,
I remember the Waffle House being closed. Folks who are not from the South might not understand what an icon that little yellow restaurant really is. Back during the storm we remember as the ice-apocalypse a few years ago, quite a few people found shelter in the local Waffle House, with power out, the roads all closed and nowhere else to go, the Waffle House became a refuge. One Waffle House manager proudly told a local news station, “We never close.”
But Waffle House did close, and for a long time. And things only got more interesting.
As the year dragged on, we went from shutdowns to the violent civil unrest which seemed to occupy the headlines for the rest of the year. As 2021 dawned, it was even worse. What with the Capitol riot and attempts to overturn the election, there was no relief in sight. And then came the Delta variant. And after that came the Omicron variant...
We keep looking forward to some return to something like normal. For the times we live in to return to something like what we are used to. But so far, things only seem to get more interesting, more stressful. I could never have imagined a couple of years like we have lived through.
Hopefully we have learned a few things. Hopefully we are better for what we have learned. Maybe we will not take people for granted so much. They say what does not kill us makes us stronger. Maybe that is true, maybe our society will be stronger going forward.
That could be a good thing, but my prayer, my fervent hope, is that the next year is a lot less interesting.