In the last week, I’m witnessing an acceleration in what I’ll call “The COVID Struggle,” or more simply, “The Struggle.” Many people are having a hard time dealing with and accepting the reality of life under a global pandemic, and are lashing out against this constrained way of living in ways big and small. They desperately want things to go back to the way they were before, so they pretend that everything is fine—that life as we knew it can resume with minimal further disruption.
But life is nowhere near returning to normal anytime soon. I’d say at best, we’re a quarter of the way through this thing. This is unsettling, which is why people are rejecting reality. Without strong leadership in place as a check on human impulses (selfish, short-term), the situation worsens and the whole episode drags on. The suffering elongates. It’s a self-reinforcing feedback loop.