A Year Of Too Much Thinking
By: Randy Fredlund
Tags: Thinking, Covid 19, Humor, Kubler Ross, Year In Review

A Year Of Too Much Thinking

Image used with permission of Mary Durant (marydurant.com)

A short history of the previous 12 months:

Virus? Do you mean the flu? Oh. Definitely not the flu. Pandemic pandemonium. Hope you don’t have preexisting conditions. Shut down, wear a mask, stay away. Hope you don’t have gift cards to local restaurants. Hope you have enough toilet paper. Hunker down and don’t watch too much bad news.

Hope you don’t have a non-essential or too-essential job. Get outside as soon as it warms up. Summer! Stay outside! People on the streets! Ain’t life grand? Oops, getting chilly. Look out, here we go again. More sick and dying. Shut-in. Massive binge-watching. Hope you have the internet and your friend’s account for content. Not enough bandwidth, not enough good series.

Either nothing to do and all day to do it, or juggle a job, kids, spouse, cooking, shopping, bills, and more, all day long. Everyone thinks the country is falling apart, but can’t agree on how and why. Stop watching that damn bad news!

Hope you have antacids. Hope you have a glimmer of hope since a vaccine is on the way. Many vaccines! Hooray! Calm down and don’t get ahead of ourselves here. Wait your turn, curse the website, maybe get a shot. Maybe two! Only time older is better. Light at the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel is still too long. Go to hell, variant strains. Stay well.

Perfectly summed up? Of course not, but not that far off. Let’s delve further.

Thinking

There has been plenty of time to think. Too much, in fact. Round and round we go on pointless excursions through blended truth and conjecture, to the benefit of none.

It helps to have a sense of direction when in uncharted waters. Hence the Kübler-Ross Pandemic Model. Even if the non-viral effects of the pandemic are not quite killing us, we grieve the loss of our lifestyle.

For your personal benefit, here is a step-by-step guide to help you through the stages:

DENIAL

Virus? Flu, right? Masks? Hah, never gonna wear one of those. What for? Kill Grandma? Kill me? No way. Oops. Wait a minute.

ANGER

Where’d this damn thing come from? Let’s bomb the lab that cooked this up. This is a plot to destroy our economy. The numbers aren’t real. This is a plot to destroy my sanity! I love my spouse, but enough is enough! Hey, buddy, where’s your mask? Yeah, viruses actually go in and out of those nose holes, moron, so cover them up. And why are you going to that gathering that puts you and everyone else at risk?

BARGAINING

If I don’t get out of this house, I’m gonna die anyway, so I’m just going to have ONE beer with my buds at the bar. We’ll sit far apart. What if the house caves in while I’m quarantining? Maybe I know better than what all those contradictory scientists are telling me. I don’t know anyone who has this disease, so it can’t be that bad.

DEPRESSION

Grandma is gone. One of my buds is in hospital. I’m scared. Reality really sucks. TV sucks. Zoom sucks. Cold takeout sucks. This is never gonna end. We’re all gonna die.

ACCEPTANCE

It’s not 1918. It’s not 1941. It’s not fun, but it’s not the end of the world. There is hope. Stay well. See you on the other side. We’ll get together then, friend. You know we’ll have a good time then.