Over The Last 25 Years | Covid Journal
I often think how fortunate I am to have been born before the 24-hour news cycle and era of excess. To me, over the last 25 years, the news has become the news. It seems to serve the primary purpose of telling people what events are important and how to understand them. Then news outlets create a tagline for each event that can fit on a bumper sticker. For Covid, it is “back to normal.”
The era of excess has ushered in too many experts, restaurants, coffee shops, cell phones, apps, and people trying to become famous by Friday. I remember when George W. Bush declared the United States was going to war to fight the terrorists. Within weeks, many of the news outlets were littered with “experts” talking about terrorism, the middle east, and Islam, all day every day.
When Covid first hit and lockdowns were implemented, I thought this may be the time to get a lot of the excess out of society. I often think, do we really need the same fast-food restaurants and coffee shops every five-block sand does television and the internet have enough experts? Sports have the most with singing, dancing, relationships, dating, finance, plastic surgery, and on and on competing for the first-place spot.
I left my hometown years ago to attend school in North Carolina, and my life has not been the same since. I had to learn how to interact with people, different situations, and a culture I had never been exposed to. Perhaps because there was not a 24-hour news cycle nor a laundry list of experts to highlight and define my experiences or identify who to trust or like and why, I determined what was important and memorable, as well as who and what I should like along with the reasons. Since this time, I do not recall wondering when my life will return to normal.
Before I went to school in North Carolina, I had a boyfriend who I had dated for many years. For a while, I could not figure out what was missing, and it took me years to realize I didn’t have him. When I returned home, our relationship was not the same. A lot of years passed and one day he said to me, “why did you let me go, why did you let me mess up my life?” I told him, you didn’t mess up your life, it’s just called life.
A couple of years ago, I read a story about Afeni Shakur, the mother of Tupac Shakur who died at the age of 25. The article stated how Afeni Shakur told Sybrina Fulton, regarding the death of her son Trayvon Martin, something to the effect that you never accept it, you just learn to live with it.
This is how I see COVID, it’s just called life and we learn to live with it.
