What the Caterpillar Calls the End of the World, the Master Calls a Butterfly

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength. – Corrie Boom

There is a lot of worry and anxiety right now in the world today.  There are many different wars that are affecting people who live in the United States.  Many people are losing their jobs because of the cutbacks of the federal government.  The stock market is doing bad and it is affecting people’s livelihood and retirement.  There is talk of us going into a recession.  The federal government may shut down in a few days unless there is a budget.  People are scared–they are scared of the government, they are scared for their paychecks, they are scared for their housing, and they are scared for their health insurance.  In this time of stress and uncertainty, why are we talking about something that happened five years ago?  Who cares what happened during the Covid pandemic?

My memaw lived her life many times in uncertainty.  She lived through the depression (talk about anxiety over a paycheck!); she lived during WWII, in which her husband went off to war, while she adopted a newborn, not sure about the future at all.  He even was Missing in Action, in which there were weeks she didn’t know if he was alive.  He then became a Prisoner of War, which she was happy he was alive, but for how long?  All while caring for a newborn.  She had a lot of uncertainty about her health–she was born with a “weak heart” and had many heart attacks in her life.  She had triple bypass surgery in the 1970’s when such a thing was unheard of.  When her husband died in 1982, my memaw didn’t even know how to write a check, much less pay bills and household expenses.  Throughout all of this, she learned and survived.  And she was happy.

Part of the reason she survived successfully and lived a full life was because she learned lessons from the past.  She made mistakes, she made some good decisions, and she learned from all of that.  In our current climate, we need to take the lessons we learned in Covid and use them for us to survive successfully like Memaw did.

Last week I talked about some of the lessons we learned.  This week there are more lessons that can be applied to today’s world–if we look back on what we learned!  Sometimes, it is just easier to forget and keep going.  Then we risk going down the wrong path or worse yet, going down the same path as before but expecting different results.  

Life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it. – Charles Swindoll

Fake vs. Real News

One thing we learned was how to listen/watch/read the news and decipher if it was true or not.  Covid really amplified how news could be manipulated and be totally false, but sounded true.  After a while, we learned we couldn’t take anyone’s word on things.  We had to do our own research, figure out who the credible resources were, and make our own decisions.  Let’s take vaccines, for instance.  We were told that vaccines were wonderful, not harmful, and really did their job to protect us from certain diseases.  In the past, there was talk that vaccines caused autism.  That talk has risen again in the past few months.  The problem with that talk was there was no proof–back then and even now.  There was/is a correlation but not causation.  What does that mean?  That means that many childhood vaccines occur before the age of 3.  Autism can be successfully diagnosed by the age of 3.  So the occurrence of vaccines and when autism is diagnosed is correlated–they happen around the same time.  However, that does not mean it caused the autism.  Like my pappy always said, “All hounds are dogs, but not all dogs are hounds!”  Do vaccines cause harm?  Children can have a fatal allergic reaction to them.  However, this is about 2 cases per million of children.  One question I see a lot of is why are there more cases of autism than ever before in our history?  Two reasons–first, early diagnosis.  As parents, we are smarter and when we see something wrong, we go to the professionals to help our child.  The second reason–because we have changed our labeling.  Many autistic children were labeled as mentally retardation a few decades ago.  Mental retardation was a poor diagnosis because it didn’t tell us much about what the child’s abilities and disabilities were.  Now, with the new diagnosis of autism, we understand what a child needs by where they are on the spectrum.  Why more autistic children now?  Because we are a smarter society.  

One moment of patience may ward off great disaster. One moment of impatience may ruin a whole life. — Chinese Proverb

Small Businesses

One thing we learned during the pandemic was how important small businesses are to our society.  Our economy relies on small businesses for products, service, employment, and entrepreneurship.  Without small businesses, we would have higher prices, less variety of products and services, and higher unemployment.  The government saw that and helped small businesses during the shutdown with grants and short term loans.  Us consumers helped by patronizing those businesses as much as we could, even if we only could do take out food or pick up of groceries (invented during Covid).  Small businesses and even farmers are again being threatened with freezing of federal money and enormous tariffs on imports (and now countries are retaliating with large tariffs on exports).  Ask any economist how important small businesses are.  We need them, just like we need freedom and democracy.  Without small businesses, we would live in a communist-like society.  Farmers…they are so important.  Their whole world revolves around the earth, the environment, and the weather.  Farming is what keeps us alive–literally.  They go through so much and now, the bird flu!  Talk about worry and stress.  Why can’t we try to make their lives easier?  Why do we penalize them for growing crops, dairy, meat, and eggs?  No federal money to help them and now charge them more to export their products.  How much longer do you think we will have farmers?  How much longer for small businesses?

When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. – Franklin D. Roosevelt  What did we learn?

There are many lessons we have learned from the pandemic.  I have only highlighted a few.  But some of the most important things we learned are about ourselves.  We are survivors.  We are resislent.  We hate being lonely but we do like being alone.  We hate change but can live with it and even embrace it if we need to.  We need to make our own decisions, our own judgements, but we also need to listen to others.  We need to have empathy.  No, we will not change other people’s mind, but hopefully we will keep our own mind open.  The most important thing?  We need balance.  We are too old of a nation to have extremes.  We have too much history.  We can be one thing and another and another.  We don’t have to choose.  We can be a lot of things.  Don’t pigeon-hole us.  Don’t tell me what I should think; don’t tell me lies to make yourself look better; don’t threaten or bully me.  My job is to listen, to care, and to be balanced.  If I stick to those values, I can survive anything.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly. – Richard Bach