2022: BACK TO REAL WORLD REALITIES?

Most people were hoping Christmas 2021 would be a return to a semblance of normality: traditional Christmas and a return to what we’ve come to know and celebrate as the annual “festive season.” In effect a reprieve, or reward for the one COVID-19 denied us in 2020.
But it wasn’t to be; the pandemic simply changed its name and hung around. Christmas 2021 simply came and, well, we’re living its aftermath.
Given the over twelve months of pandemic inculcating we were forced to endure in the first round of COVID-19 — Christmas cancellation, imposed political directives, including respecting health/scientific protocols — distancing and whatnot, the 2020 festive season was simply a matter of doing things differently as far as joyful celebrating go, in order to make the annual year-end timeout period as enjoyable as possible to afford some semblance of what we view as traditional Christmas, extracting as much as possible from what or how we traditionally celebrate the festive/holiday season and all that it implies to people who, based on religious affiliation to celebrate the year’s end and time-out period.
That’s last year’s and the year before that news, something beyond human, scientific minds’ control. Think of it as what some people call “the new normal.” Or simply blame it on the Scrooge pandemic for stealing our Christmas the past two years.
All I can say is this, like everyone else who listens and believes in scientific reality and truth… I too had a quiet Christmas: no fussing, no denying, no partying… going here and there to have a drink and so on with relatives and/or friends. Most importantly, no COVID-19 related mental or other distractions or crises…
I was at peace with myself and those around me, the resonant euphonious seasonal sounds of “Silent Night,” “All I want for Christmas” and other seasonal standards like (the late Donny Hathaway’s) This Christmas in effect. I also made ample use of abundant varied television offerings.
Depending on viewing habits, likes and dislikes, there are always many programs of interest to interrupt the prevailing cemetery-like external seasonal atmosphere. I also made use of the bed. Watching television late, as some call it “binge television watching…”
It means sleeping in late, sometimes waking up very late with a foggy mind, unable to determine what day, time and so on it is. Everyday was like Sunday morning, everyone sleeping in, late. Naturally, Everyone was doing the same thing: sleeping, taking advantage of the “most wonderful time of the year” sentiment afforded by the holiday season.
Sometimes I would wake up with a foggy mind, unable to determine what day, time and so on it is. Everyday was like Sunday morning, everyone sleeping in, late.
That’s part of what Christmas is about, R&R!
I knew things were back to normal when watching the evening news a couple weeks ago, my attention was fixed on a story featuring a young white woman (seemed like a Trumpesqe acolyte?) berating a Chinese gentleman about the matter of the pandemic, claiming that it happened “…because of you Chinese people.”
So we’re off and running… again preoccupied with the issues that matter (to some of us) and are passionate about.
And so it will be the duration of this new year, 2022. Sadly, and to borrow the old cliché, “The more times and things change the more life and some people and things will (predictably) remain the same.” To the skewed delight of some, the chagrin of others… human nature being what it is.
Meanwhile, singularly or collectively, we all gotta believe in something…
For example, out of the expired year and into this new one, I was hoping to see some tangible, notable and practical change in certain aspects of human behaviour. Perhaps it’s an aspect of my nurtured humanity and humaneness, mentally embedded.
Just a week ago I watched a local news story of a familiar problematic social issue and became preoccupied with ethnocentrism being played out in prime time news. Perhaps you saw it too.
It was a cell phone recording of an incident featuring a white female standing in the checkout line of a Nun’s Island grocery store. She was in various stages of an anti-Chinese ethnocentric rant berating… a Chinese gentleman.
Perhaps the white woman was overcome by the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly the Omicron variant, which resulted in her having to work from home. She chose an opportune moment to go off on the gentleman to explicitly state (including F-bombing) that that the man was interrupting her life by bringing the (F-bombing) COVID-19 Pandemic to Nuns Island (Quebec) to interrupt her job and life, etc…
The woman was audibly angry by the reality of the new Omicron variant strain of the pandemic affecting her personal life.
“It’s about all of this 21 months of bull…” the woman could be heard spewing. “It’s because of you Chinese people.”
For me, it was a heads-up reminder that the more some people try to change things, the more some others’ socially polluted minds (will) remain the same.
I’ve been hearing various stories of people being mentally and otherwise impacted by the pandemic, not always readily evident. Mental frailties, periodically discussed in electronic and print media, are examples of that serious debilitating societal issue.
Perhaps that Nun’s Island hater is one of those affected. She chose to “go off” on a perceived vulnerable person by publicly venting her pent-up ethnocentric hate.
Hell, it could’ve been one of the other chosen kinds, being verbally assaulted at that Nun’s Island supermarket, but…
That acolyte was audibly angered by the presence of the gentleman and was triggered.
Be on guard, then, is my mental mantra going forward… So which is it… luck and/or vaccine…?
From what I’ve heard, read and observed via media, death by pandemic is ugly, uncomfortable and painful as hell. As such, people I know are thinking longterm, and want to have and celebrate an ‘ole fashion’ Christmas 2022.
We’re off and running… What about you, which is it?