Contrary to all the insanity going on in the world these last few weeks, it is in fact not the end of the world.
Did you think it was? It’s not.
I mean, I have no idea if all this coronavirus stuff will get worse – if twenty years later we will all look back and regret overreacting – or something in between.
But I do know this:
Life will go on. Schools will reopen. My wife and I will stop working from home. Everyone will eventually start eating out again. Church will reopen its doors. We might even make it to Hawaii.
As this passage points to, we think everything is monumental in our youth.
In fact, few things are new and great.
It’s a new generation escaping childhood, going to college, discovering old and tired ideas, getting married, going to war, becoming sick, getting divorcing, going bankrupt, and questioning life.
Yes: All this has happened before.
I know now that almost everyone wonders something like that, sooner or later and no matter what he or she is doing, but one of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.
-Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem