Pandemic

I've been hearing a lot more sirens lately. I don't know if that's normal or not. What is normal anyway? Normal is going to school. Normal is being able to read a textbook, not a downloaded version of one. Normal is not feeling like every day is this never-ending repetition of the last, on and on and on. This certainly isn't normal. I'm starting to feel a bit like Prometheus and that stupid eagle.

 I was at the park last week, and saw a few people go into a house on my street, then a few more, then a few more. At last, I saw a middle aged couple step out of their car with a Costco-brand salad and a case of Corona beer. That's when I realized the gravity of the situation, that these people were attending a party, and that they were deliberately making fun of this pandemic. Not only were they being ignorantly facetious, but they were putting other people at risk. I think that's what has been scaring me this whole time: people's blatant ignorance for safety, for what's morally right. They're a herd of sheep their whole lives until someone says that they should listen to the herd, then they want to defy. And really, I believe in civil disobedience and the right to protest. It's healthy and important and most beneficial changes in the world wouldn't have happened without it. What I'm referring to is yelling to the void without checking facts, just spewing lies. Ignorance is about as easily spread as this pandemic, so it's important to guard yourself with logic and a healthy amount of skepticism. If a guy in a silly red hat is telling you to drink dangerous chemicals to preserve your physical well-being, should you listen to him?

My intention isn't to hurt people or start a fight. I guess I'm just yelling into the void, but I hope I've done my research.

What I Miss Most

It's funny how many things we take for granted each day. subconsciously, of course, but taken for granted all the same. There are many people in my life who annoy me; their mere presence is a hazard to my sanity. But, they're still in my life, and I still miss those daily trials for my wits.
  I've always lived in densely populated areas in Vancouver, and I've never known anything different than to look out my window to see busses and cars and people going by on their individual journeys. With these rules to fight the pandemic in place, it's eerie to abandoned streets drained of life. Sure, I miss grocery stores and beaches as much as the next person, but things feel a bit deeper than that. 
 The reason I love the bustle of cities so dearly is that each person in a city is so vastly individual from the next in such a beautiful and complex way. We're all trying to make our way through the world unscathed in our own ways, our own journeys, our own means and terms. Each of us is handed a different set of circumstances to endure in a unique way. I love the fact that I be to be a part of someone's story, even for a brief second. The old lady sitting across from me on the bus is on her own path that I can't follow. The man and his daughter walking past me on their way to school are on their own journeys. I'm a part of that for just a second at a time. We all collide for mere moments every day, each different and vastly beautiful and heart breaking and lonesome day of our lives. Imagine what could be changed with a quick hello or a wave and a smile? The world is lonesome and cold and terrifying, truly, but there is something so morbidly stunning about all of it. 
 Oscar Wilde once said that "it takes courage to see the world in all its tainted glory and still to love it". I suppose I just miss feeling like a real person, because I can't witness other people living.