Hail Brave hearts

It’s quiet.  The days are long and the sounds are different.  Less traffic, less chatter, fewer people.  The night is quiet.  No street noise late at night.  More rest and relaxation, more time for self reflection and self interest.  An unusual change in reality.  The business of our lives has vanished, to be replaced with long days of self isolation and social distancing.  Communication skills and life skills have changed.  We vanish into the isolation of family.

Business winds down and phone lines are still.  The rush of commercialism has changed from endless shopping to buying masks.  Social skills have become social distancing.  The latest craze is hand sanitizer. We will learn to be clean, cleaner than we’ve ever been, by simply washing our hands.  Don’t touch your face. Wear a mask.

This new dilemma is an outstanding challenge of perseverance.  We win this.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

We win this for ourselves and for the lifestyles that we covet.  We win this for our families whose affection we cherish.  We win this, as if we are fighting a war.  It’s a virus, but it’s a substantial foe.  An odd set of circumstances bring us to this awful place, our lust to see new worlds.  The insatiable curiosity of other lands, other peoples, other worlds to travel to.  A holiday, a honeymoon, a business trip, a cultural exchange, all tourism, and the fine mechanism of money.

Bring me riches, bring me gold, bring me markets, bring me wealth.  Be it imperialistic plunder, or grass roots peasantry, bring me humans by the score.  The tourist dollars go round and round, round and round, round and round, all through the town.

An unprecedented disaster occurs which brings a dreadful halt to our wealth building module.  No tourists, no money.  No money, no gain.  So much of our time and energy has been absorbed in tourism, that now, the problem arises, how do we return the wheels of fortune?  What is our plan B?  With this economic strategy falling, what brilliance will replace it?  What dollars and sense will catapult us to economic recovery?

Slowly we return to the normal world of prosperity.  Build it, oh financial geniuses, build it with magic and wizardry.   Paint the pallet black, so that the recovery is complete, oh you awesome doctors of mathematics.

Meanwhile, what we can enjoy from this pandemic, since it befalls us, is the quiet solitude of our new found wealth.  Time.  Time to be home with recipes to try, with exercise class, online courses, email, documentaries, online business, social media. Time to indulge in a hobby, a new lifestyle, a project.  Time to change and to be new.  Time to rejuvenate and to emerge from the cocoon  as a butterfly.

The recovery strategy is markets, be it foreign or domestic, but business has always been the money wheel.  There are always other strategies.  The strategy of self help and learning, of exploration within Canada, of athletics and education.  A different wealth is offered.  A wealth of time, of restriction, of poverty.  The wealth that demands that people stay home, enjoy their own place, discover their own good fortune of the new, the unusual, the uniqueness of their own land.  This is a new age of discovery, of being the tourist in your own homeland.  This is the restriction of no money, when we can’t afford international travel.  Save us!  Save us from the devil that calls this a sin.  Save us from the mind that abhors it.  The self indulgent traveler who knows their own homeland, like the maps, the parks, the novels that are written for it.  Sing to us, oh great traveler, who recognizes those place names  and can check them off their bucket list.  The growing names of unknown places, waiting for a visit.

Joy to us, for the pleasure of this compromise.  No international travel, stay home and enjoy your place.   Joy to us, for this restriction of our poverty.  It is with great pride, that we present to ourselves, our own great nation.

Our travels become close at hand, perhaps only within the province.  Lucky are we, for this gigantic misfortune.  We have it to ourselves.  All of this beauty and magnificence, that we show off to the world, is just for us right now.

It’s for us, you awesome human.  This oasis in the universe is for us.

Written by Dr. Louise Hayes

June 7, 2020