Man, I Was Not Ready for This Pandemic

Man, I was not ready for this pandemic. Not at all. Up until March, my life revolved around being in the physical presence of other people, usually packed together in classrooms, airports and airplanes, hotels, conference rooms, restaurants, concerts, and dance floors. Indeed, I could not have been less well prepared for staying home, isolating, and distancing.

I mean, the adjustment has been brutal. I've lost income. I've fallen into bouts of anger and despair. I've struggled with waiting in well-spaced lines, dodging people on the sidewalks, carrying on day-to-day life via the computer, and wearing a mask. The mask has been particularly tough because, let's face it, my smile is my "money maker." I've had to learn to smile with my eyes, for crying out loud. 

If only I'd practiced these things. If only I had pre-restricted my social and professional life. That would have been the thing to do, right? I should have anticipated this pandemic by hunkering down more, keeping to myself, and perfecting my indoor hobbies. I mean, it's not like people weren't warning us that "the big one" was coming, but I guess I was cocky, you know. I'd survived the HIV/AIDS pandemic as well as SARS, MERS, Ebola, and several versions of flu without really changing a thing. But I see now how maybe I should have gone into training in order to be ready for this. Then the transition wouldn't have been so hard, then I would have been ready, then I would have been way ahead of all those other schmucks who were just living their lives, without a care in the world.

I should have worried more. I should have stocked up. I should have been "pandemic ready."

Of course, that's crazy. No one practices for a pandemic. It makes no sense to make one's life grim, to deprive oneself, to stop living in order to pre-experience hardship, yet that's exactly what we do when we harp on concepts like school or kindergarten "readiness." Let's make kids struggle through things for which they aren't developmentally ready in order to prepare them for next year when they will also be expected to struggle through things for which they aren't developmentally ready. And then let's "motivate" them with warnings about "falling behind." That's more or less the rationale behind trying to teach literacy to three-year-olds. It's the logic behind making preschoolers pre-grind their noses over worksheets and standardized tests. It's the logic behind making our youngest citizens sit, facing forward, while muted even as every fiber of their being is crying out to actually live their lives.

This, of course, is not what preschoolers should be doing. Humans are designed to play, to explore their world, to ask and answer their own questions, to invent, discover, pretend, and imagine. If there is a "pandemic" of schooling in their future, it will be challenging no matter what. What we do in the name of "school readiness" is a shame. What a cruelty it is to artificially force children to suffer in anticipation of suffering and to prime their parents with fears of "falling behind."

I am finding ways to thrive during this pandemic, not because I practiced for it, but rather because I have, up until now, lived my life as best I could, facing challenges as they come, overcoming them or adapting. Of course, I miss the old world, but I'm accustomed to living the life in front of me, learning from the real world and making the most of the present reality. Resilience, flexibility, and creativity don't come from practice or training, but rather from the habit of living the life in front of us, right now. And it's this, and only this, that allows us to be "ready" for whatever challenges life has to offer.

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