Sioux Falls Signs of the Time
This coronavirus thing isn't subtle by any stretch of the imagination. It has cut a wide storm path through society and individual lives with a voracious cruelty most of us could never have fathomed two months ago.
To say that nearly everything in our lives has been touched by this thing isn't hyperbole. It has changed the way we work, shop, and socialize. It has stranded many of us on our own sanitized, but less-than-tropical islands.
As human beings, many of us have a tendency to dismiss anything that hasn't touched us in a deeply personal way.
If you, or someone dear to you, have not had the virus, and add to that, that you've lost your livelihood, or a way to support yourself and your family, you tend to lean toward "getting back to normal" asap. Even though the consequences could be devastating.
Doctors, nurses, first-responders, front-line workers, caregivers- - all who have seen, firsthand, the death and destruction caused by this villain, are more judicious with respect to loosening the constraints we're living under now. As are the more vulnerable members of society.
Empathy, right now, in my opinion, is in seriously short supply.
All of this was swirling around my brain as I drove around Sioux Falls on our rainy Saturday and again this past Monday, looking for signs of the time. And, I certainly found them.