Watching our church service via Facebook is an interesting adaptation to using technology to keep with a routine – to gather with people online – of course it is one way, streaming, but there is a capability for sending messages to everyone. It is Lent. Jesus is a healer. “I once was blind, but now I see.” Famous story. This is a very key story for now. It contains a number of paradoxes. It involves faith and struggles – questioning in the midst of something that people do not understand.

We are blinded to understanding. We must have faith to continue on. We are all in this together. The outcome is not ours to control. We must try not to fear because fear disables our abilities to think clearly. It does not mean that we should not be aware and react. It means that we need to keep calm and have faith that if there is a solution, it will come because good smart people are working on this, diligently, and with as much haste as is possible. If there is not a solution, it is for a reason. That is quite a different kettle of fish. It would be the life of the world to come.

So, it’s not dark yet here. We wake up still and we are OK. The dog is barking and doing her usual routine. She doesn’t know that there is something threatening out there – the unseen, but known threat is microscopic and she cannot sense it. She can sense the squirrels (her always top named threat), and all the people and dogs going in front of the house. She comes and visits to check on me and get a treat – and to bark at the people who pass by my window.

There is a great weight that is pressing on all of us that reorients our thinking. We are not focused on what it was that we focused on a month ago. A month from now, if we are still able, we will focus on whatever it is that we are dealing with then. For now, be here now.

Every day I wake up and try to have a good attitude about all of this. Reading the news of the world is a double-edged sword kind of exercise. It can be scary. It can be anxiety producing. On one hand, it underscores the ramifications of the poor choices that our past election put into motion. Whether this was the hand of a foreign manipulation doesn’t matter. It is what it is. Congress can’t do anything right now except try to figure out how to act without him disabling them.

November elections are coming. If he continues to drift as he has been into spewing nonsense and meddling in stuff he shouldn’t be meddling in, it will seal his one-term fate. We can only hope that the country is not destroyed by his actions any more than he has already destroyed it.

Enough of that. We watch helplessly hoping that a solution comes soon – in the meantime, it’s all about “flattening the curve” the now pervasive motto that many have adopted. It’s down to the individual to behave to help this, no matter how hard it is to do this. We will all be sacrificing something in order to keep alive and keep well.

Complacency is what we reach when there has not been a huge disruption in our lives. If you have ever lived with an underlying, “always there in the background” threat, you understand what it means to be alert to signs that something might be happening. Something that will disrupt. Gut level uncertainty. Some people have more acute sensors than others. We all live on some sort of scale as we are judged by others. For some of us complacency has never been an option. Ever. When we near feeling that way, the switch gets flipped to worry mode. That’s just how it is with some of us who have lived life with certain experiences.

My experience with family members and poor health outcomes has influenced the way I live, to a certain extent. It has painted boundaries around some of my habits.

For instance, certain members of my family think I am a “health nut” — just because I practice, by and large, eliminating certain food elements from my diet, because I have a genetic predisposition to heart disease. I have tried to explain, but they still give me a look, and we just move on. I think, “you had to have been there…”.

For them, it is likely a foregone conclusion that just doing whatever they want in terms of their diet gets them an outcome that they accept. Live for the moment. I envy that. I’ve tried it. For me, it hasn’t worked, yet.

I think amongst them, I have been labeled. Here’s why I think this — I’ve been given “vegetarian” cookbooks for gifts. I’m not a vegetarian, but someone must think that I am. I don’t eat a lot of meat, and prefer fish and chicken, but I do eat meat occasionally – and I insist on good cuts of meat, not just any meat…

I have one friend who always makes sure to bring “gluten-free” items to my house (for me). I’m not gluten intolerant. I don’t eat gluten-free on purpose, but sometimes what I eat is gluten-free. I don’t think about it when I buy those items. I don’t know why this assumption was made, but to my knowledge, I’ve never indicated that I was that. Yet, now, I hear it from others in our community of friends that they assumed I’m gluten-free.

I just try to cut certain things out of my diet. I don’t make others do this. However, I get heavy pressure to “splurge” a little, when there are fat and sugar laden goodies, fresh from the oven. Over the years, I have relaxed some, but definitely guard against forming habits. I go back to cutting those things out of my diet as a norm. I can measure by the five pounds I gain whenever I am around that stuff how it affects me. The other aspect is that I don’t get as much activity in every day at those times. Blood work results tell the tale, as well. That is an example of my situation and how I manage it. I know what works for me.

I guess, with me, I observed people smoking, eating unhealthy food, and not being active, and saw what happened. So, beginning in the mid-1970’s, I went to Weight Watchers, lost 50 pounds, and embarked on a journey to not be obese. Unfortunately, as we have learned, you struggle not to gravitate to that highest weight for the rest of your life. It messes with your metabolism, big-time.

But, I still try to eat whole foods vs. processed ones, and I try to perhaps over-correct for my genetics, hoping that I can eek out a few more years than my predetermined estimated life span – that predicts I’ll be around until my late-70’s to mid-80’s. I still have conditions that are likely inherited, that I have to vigilantly manage.

These are tiresome tasks. Yet, I know by experience what happens if I give in and give it up.

But despite best attempts, there will be existential threats that will overcome any prevention that we’ve tried to put in place. Like now.

Despite doing my best, I know that something else could prematurely push me off the planet, and this all is within a “risk set”. Rogue viruses and such are within that risk set, along with being killed in an accident, murdered, or as a victim of a wide-scale natural or human-made disaster.

This virus we are dealing with right now is likely a combination of a natural and human-introduced disaster. In my opinion, eating strange (to us) animals, not inspected or certified to be free of disease, is a human-caused disaster, again that is in my opinion.

Here – in most places there are cautions against eating raw meat – fish – oysters – any of the above that have been inspected… Might be re-thinking this… But, we know that bats and this critter called a pangolin that kind of looks like an armadillo cousin, are where this virus crossed over to the human side. Bats have been implicated in the past. Now, I know that we all laugh about road-kill chili (throwing in some armadillo meat), but nobody does that. Armadillos are known to carry diseases, so besides in zoos, people tend to keep their distance from our world famous armored local mammals. People shoot squirrels and rabbits, and make stews out of them, but they cook these at high temperatures, never eating them raw (unless a person is on drugs or hallucinating or something).

Not to play the blame game, but if… if… wishes were horses, we would ride away… and we wish that whoever ate that raw wild animal and was “patient zero”, had thought better of that. Likely, they are not around to tell the tale.

But for the immediate and near future, it is about watching for that day when we see the sun rising up over the trees – when we realize that just maybe we are going to see this pandemic come to an end. Then our task is to get ourselves collectively better prepared to handle the next one – and there will most assuredly be a next one.

It’s going to be awhile before that day arrives. Looking at the numbers, and still not understanding what the scientists have concluded as they are still learning… yes, it will be our new normal. We are adjusting. We will adapt. Just like after 9/11. We had to adapt. And, it’s not dark yet.