I’ve been talking a lot about change and adaptability of late. My posts have had an edge of depression and of hopelessness. Perhaps. I suppose it depends on who reads it and their own interpretations. I just know that some out there have reached out to me to ask how I am doing. I am surviving. I am getting by. But it has certainly be challenging.
I decided to re-read my very first post, made back in May of 2020. Near the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just so we are clear, the pandemic is still ongoing. It has not ended. It has not concluded. It is still ongoing. So I might consider this an update of the present state of things. After about three and a half years, what has changed? How good a job did I do at predicting the future?
Turns out my words from back then are still very much applicable. In my own opinion, what I saw at the beginning is still very much what has and is still happening today. The pandemic is still not really about a disease. It is about a change. It is about exposing the world in ways that ought to have helped progress humanity forward. Unfortunately, I was also correct about there only being a few who seem to have taken the hint and tried to do something about it. Because it seems like the majority of people have simply dug deeper holes in the sand to stick their heads into.
As I said back then, the problems and issues in the world are not new. Scarcity of resources is not new. The critical need of reducing and reusing is even more apparent now than it was at the beginning. In fact, it seems like the problems are actually getting worse. There are less and less people doing stuff, and more and more people demanding stuff. Less people generating those products and offering those services, and more people wanting and needing to purchase those products that do not exist, and begging for those services that there is no one to provide.
As a basic example, healthcare in Canada. There is a shortage of doctors. Again, this is not new. There was a shortage of doctors since before 2020. But now, with all that has happened, that shortage has become worse. Burn out and inequity has taken its toll, and there is less interest in working in that field. Why subject yourself to the torture and abuse? It just isn’t worth it. Especially if you are concerned with your own mental health and well being.
Speaking of mental health, it has come to light that perhaps I should be assessed properly and officially for autism. My mother used to tell everyone I had Asperger syndrome when I was a child. The description fit, and still does: high-functioning, intelligent, socially awkward, clumsy. I was, and still am, all of these things. But over time, I also learned other tricks to conceal any perceived weaknesses I might have. Camouflaging is a term used to describe it. How, through years of observation of others, I learned to present myself as normal, to reduce the troubles I frequently had, especially socially.
My partner has started calling me neurodivergent. It is clear I do not think or feel as others do. I am not normal with regard to thinking and feeling. I certainly do not present the same as others. This has been an ongoing complaint in my relationships. I do not get excited about the same things most get excited about, and even when I do get excited, I don’t present the way most do. I am suppressed, or muted. Perhaps that is in part due to the drugs I was on about 15 years ago to deal with a bipolar diagnosis.
This is a bit of a tangent from where I started, but I assure you it is relevant. Like with so many other things, this part of who I am has been exposed and has become harder and harder to ignore. The pandemic has revealed this aspect of me, and I am having to face it and deal with it now, when for so many years before I was able to pretend it did not exist.
In my youth, the very idea I might have such conditions was abhorrent. It would suggest I was somehow lesser. And in my attempts to present as normal, such diagnoses would clearly influence the ways people would look at me. As much as I could, I had to BE normal, lest others would treat me with disdain. For me, that was a rocky road. It took a lot to get to where I am today.
But I am still that same little boy at heart too. I still have the same challenges I did in my youth. I still lock up with deception and lying. I still shy from social interactions. I still wear a mask all the time. Sure, I’ve developed an incredibly large toolbox of coping mechanisms and formalized presentation schemes to hide in plain sight. But what remains beneath has always been there. Continues to be there. And my partner, in that she is the closest person to me, has been in the privileged (and perhaps captive) position to see what others do not.
Like I say about the rest of the world, I too cannot ignore what has always been there. I cannot simply pretend these things do not exist and do as I did before 2020. The world has changed. I have changed. My masks are not working like they used to. I am having a harder and harder time of hiding in plain sight.
And so, I ought to take my own advice. I ought to be more adaptable and flexible. I ought to change with the times. I ought to accept myself as I am and find a way to reconcile that.
To be clear, I’m not looking for a hand out. I’m not looking for beneficial treatment. I’ve never wanted these things. However, I do find myself in need of assistance more and more as well. Facing challenges I do not know how to face. Overcoming hurdles I am unable to overcome. In part because the world has become so much more difficult to navigate. Because I cannot ignore that which was always there.
As much as when I wrote it over three years ago, I still believe the pandemic is not about a virus. The lasting effects of the pandemic are not about infections or diseases. What is important, what I believe people ought to be paying attention to, is the fact that all the weaknesses in our world, in our societies, in our cultures, are much easier to see now. Those problems we’ve tried to ignore and dismiss can no longer be ignored or dismissed.
The world is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. In part because people continue to dig those deeper holes, trying ever harder to pretend the problems don’t exist. Trying very hard to simply continue doing the same error-ridden things they were doing before 2020. Pining for the times of yore. Because it is those things that are causing the very problems we have to face. The times of yore are the source of our problems today. The solutions our forebears came to came with a price, and we in these future generations are expected to pay that price. Whether we like it or not.