Let Us Watch What We Allow Ourselves to Become

Some people like excitement, others like quietude and peace. Some people prefer to always be in a well ordered society, with plenty of "rules" to keep it so. Others prefer complete freedom and maybe even a daily dose of hurly-burly or mayhem.

No matter where we fall on the above mentioned sliding scales NONE of us like this virus thing. We chomp and stomp. We rail. We do or do not willingly submit -- be it to the virus itself or the restrictions its appearance have placed on our lives.

All of the above is normal human behavior. Part and parcel to the wonderful differences that make us "human." And if you love people -- as I try to -- you have to at least try to love all of this.

But there is another reaction, or set of reactions, to the virus that I for one find quite troubling. It may, too, just be "human," but it none-the-less is a destructive aberration.

Maybe not a truly rare one, if all of mankind and all our history is included in our field of view, but it was  once a rarity, and now not too uncommon, among such as I considered my friends.

The "it" here is a willingness to buy into bullshit.

Sorry, but how else could I equally well put it?

All the concurrent 'blame game' stories making the rounds on Facebook and filling people's screens care of YouTube and who knows what other sources.

"He" did it. "They" did it. "It's all a hoax -one perpetrated by You Know Who."

Rubbish!!!!! It is none of those things. It is a virus. A disease semi-organism -- not a true life form, but of this earth. One of many such that has ravaged the human family for all its history. "Smart" if being able to outsmart smart people makes something so. Clever. Ingenious even.

But what part of the universe isn't?

And what part of it required being made by men to be so?

Yes, it is that. An evil-to-us component of the natural order. One that is effecting our lives uninvited. Challenging many of our assumptions about... well about almost everything.

Few of us can fight this semi-organism. So instead we deflect our angst towards what we know how to fight. A "seeable" enemy (even if such is just in our imagination). A "boogie man." He. They. Them.

Some couch this in political language. Others in words with religious significance. Yet others in pseudo science. But whatever words or images are used it is all just what I said earlier: Bullshit.

Please friends... Be frustrated. (How can you not be?) Be scared. Be angry. Be whatever you need to be to cope with what we are together facing. But do not fall for "it." For by doing so you degrade yourself and hurt the human family -- both those near to you and those far away.

This particular virus is new. But challenges like this are not. What may be new, though, is a generation of men who thought they would forever be free from anything like this.

Guess what folks... we're not.

It -- the virus -- is destructive enough without letting it destroy our world. Without allowing it to turn us either back, or away, from everything we have long held dear.

Reason. Trueness. Love. Fairness. Kindness. Understanding. Personal strength and endurance.

Please, friends, hold on to those things. Let us not gravitate towards those uglier others.