Week #3 Of The New Life

There is a difference between calling something that is bad, good, and trying to make the best of a bad situation. Regardless of what good comes from the pandemic, the pandemic has visited much suffering and death around the world.

But one possible good thing that can come from this pandemic is that it has the possibility of producing similar results that could happen if we were invaded by space aliens. All too often, I've heard how the world would heal its divisions and unite if we were invaded by space aliens. So hopefully the building of unity that is occurring in communities, states, the nation, and the world will carry over after the pandemic is over.

But how can we sustain the current unity after the pandemic? One way is to build reminders of what we went through during this time. We could build reminders of the private fears, of those who required all levels of medical care, of those who died, of those who lost jobs, of those who went hungry, and of those who suffered in other ways.

We also need to remember that the suffering does not end after the pandemic. Many who lost jobs and need assistance during the pandemic will be in the same situation after the pandemic minus the health risk. So we need to build reminders of what they will go through afterwards. But not only that, we need to let our elected officials know that such people still need help.

There are other reminders to build. Those are the reminders of how individuals and groups supported each other (click here for an example). We also need to build reminders of all the workers whose jobs forced them to face risks of getting the virus that the rest of us could avoid by staying home. Of course those whose jobs force them to take risks include doctors, nurses, other hospital workers, police officers and other first responders, employees of grocery stores, drug stores, and gas stations, postal workers, those in industry who make essential household items, agricultural workers, those who work processing our food, and so forth.

We also need to remember how those in our prisons face risks as well as the correction officers who watch over them. We need to document what people from all groups went through.

We need reminders of all of the suffering and sacrifices people endured just as we have reminders of man-made sufferings such as what we can see at the Holocaust Museum or the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Only the difference between the reminders of this pandemic and what those two museums remind us of is whereas those museums remind us in order to prevent us from repeating history, the reminders of what we are going through now would be for the purpose of keeping the unity alive which is building now. And we should keep that unity alive for as long as possible.