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There Are Only Hard Facts and Harder Decisions
Welcome to the pandemic
One thing this pandemic has shown is that people have a problem facing facts.
I don’t mean facts in the sense of the scientific data (although that’s clearly a problem as well, judging by the litany of conspiracy theories that have become acceptable even in polite company). I mean “facts” in the more colloquial sense — of coming to terms with reality and accepting it on reality’s terms.
We’ve taken a merciless but increasingly well-understood virus and turned it into a divisive, partisan argument. We have somehow come to believe that what we think about the virus, or our own personal needs in relation to it, have some relevance to its spread from person to person, and its ability to kill with ruthlessness and painful efficiency.
Because we can’t bear something, we believe it doesn’t have to be borne. That’s why we see people going ahead with large, in-person weddings, or looking for hookups on Tinder because they “need the spontaneity.” It’s why our Instagram feeds are filled with vacation photos and stories from nights out.
Perhaps nothing captures this sense of entitlement better than a tweet I saw from the Fox News host Laura Ingraham:
Okay, sounds great, let me just get Covid-19’s manager for you.
Back in reality, it is a truth of human existence that some crises are inescapable. They force us to stop doing things we’d like to do, and to live instead in a state of extended uncertainty. They cost us things we really can’t afford.
Imagine someone living in America during World War II. No one could have told them when they’d be able to travel to Europe to see their aging parents again. No one could have told them when the rationing would stop. No one would have been able to say when their son would be released from the Army. No one could promise them that they were safe in their homes and would ultimately survive. The war was a fact, and everybody had to live with it.
Life is like this. It’s uncertain. It’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t really care whether we really want or need something. It doesn’t care about us at all, really. It just is.
