Blog#48- 11/1/20
WE NEED A NEW COVID WORLD VIEW
ByRichard Davis
One of the consequences of this lingering pandemic is a lack of perspective by too many people. Forget about the 30 percent of American sycophants of Trump because they never had a healthy perspective to lose.
What I am talking about is the ability of caring human beings to forget about how they fit into the overall scheme of things when it comes to daily life. As we temporarily lose some of the freedoms we once enjoyed we tend to forget that most of us really do not have it that bad compared to many other people in this country and around the world.
If you are able to move around under your own unassisted power and you do not have to worry about when or if you will have a next meal or if you will run the risk of freezing to death because you have been living outside under a tent for the past few years then you should try to realize just how well off you are.
Whenever I feel like I am having a bad day or that things are just not going well I try to think about people who are worse off than me. When you have worked in the health care field for 40 years you have a large catalogue of unfortunate people to draw from and tapping into that reservoir offers a tool for attitude adjustment.
The next time you get upset about having to walk back to your car in a grocery store parking lot because you forgot your mask think about the people who have to struggle just to walk a few steps.
According to a CDC report, “61 million Americans – have a disability that impacts major life activities. The most common disability type, mobility, affects 1 in 7 adults.” If you are not one of those 1 in 7 adults be thankful that you can make an extra trip to your car without pain or hardship. Try to remember that what you are dealing with might be trivial in the overall scheme of things.
It is disruptive to our social lives that going out to a restaurant has turned into a potential deadly encounter, but most of us will not go hungry because we cannot dine at a restaurant. This is not to minimize the impact on restaurant owners and workers because they are suffering.
If you can afford to shop for food and feed your family you are lucky.
The next time you complain about your food choices or the lack of opportunities for dining out consider this from The Intercept, “The Washington, D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, found that 3.7 percent of U.S. households reported they sometimes or often had “not enough to eat” during 2019. Meanwhile, the most recent Census data from the end of August of this year showed that 10 percent of households said they sometimes or often did not have enough to eat within the past seven days. Even worse, while about 1 percent of adults with children said their children sometimes or often went hungry in 2019, between 9 and 14 percent of such adults said the same about their kids in August 2020. CBPP estimates that this adds up to about 5 million school-aged children in such households.”
The next time you feel like complaining about the effect that the pandemic is having on your life think about disabled, homeless and hungry people in the richest country in the world and maybe you will be motivated to step out of your small world and make a difference in the bigger world.
