On the road again, hopefully back home
The road” is part of the American myth, representing exploration, adventure, resilience and discovery. Whether it was galloping through the frontier, the first journeys after Henry Ford mass-produced cars for the working class, or tracing Jack Kerouac’s paths “On the Road,” it has always represented movement into the unknown.
The GPS has conditioned us to be less curious. It has reduced travel, but made life a little more predictable, a little more boring.
The GPS went out the window with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic last March. We no longer even had a compass to choose a broad direction.
After more than 10 months, we know enough of the landscape to help us find the way back home.
An older generation that recalls atomic age “duck and cover” school drills, designed as personal protection in the event of nuclear attacks, now thinks of them as quaint. But the latest vintage of children will be shaped for the rest of their lives by the impact of wearing masks, isolation and virtual learning.
Some may fall behind. Many parents are concerned their kids are becoming addicted to screens. But families have also gotten a chance to spend more time together, and teachers finally seem to be getting a sliver of the recognition they deserved all along.
The pandemic reminds us we all are students, trying to contextualize rapid changes as we log miles on this road. Permanent change is unavoidable, and in some cases, welcome. It may have taken this crisis to get more cars off the road. And a lot of Americans are probably catching up on overdue sleep.
The decrease in the number of people contracting the flu this winter may also inspire people to consider there has always been wisdom in washing hands and not sneezing and coughing on co-workers. The shift toward telemedicine should also be leveraged in the future, as it enables quicker consults with health professionals.
Like any journey, we are concerned about unforeseen obstacles. People, by nature, want to be with one another, part of the reason fatigue for government mandates set in months ago and delayed the end to the coronavirus. The stress and anxiety of isolation lurks, almost invisible, and can jeopardize mental health for many people.
We also fear a widening of the wealth gap that is reliably worse in Connecticut than in the rest of the country. So many families will never recover from the loss of paychecks over the past year.
Many businesses, notably restaurants, have been models of innovation. And while the motion picture industry has been in free fall, we have confidence it will rebound, much as it did in the face of threats from the invention of television and the like. People will return, embracing the familiar comfort of sitting with strangers to share a common experience.
We’re on the road home. We just need to keep helping one another with directions.