It occurred to me today that I’m using the word ‘maybe’ a lot more lately.

You probably have been, too.

–> My son is almost done logging hours on his learner’s permit. We should be able to get him into the DMV sometime soon to get him a driver’s license, maybe.

–>My church hasn’t had a service, with all of the congregation in the same room, since March. We should be able to do it sometime this fall, maybe.

–>I sent my sister-in-law a get-well card in the mail. It should get to her by the end of the week, maybe.

–>We’re almost out of toilet paper. I should be able to get some at the grocery store, maybe.

There are several problems with us having to use ‘maybe’ more these days.

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The first of these problems is that, as Americans, we have become accustomed to being determiners. We make plans, we chart courses, we are the masters of our own fate. If something lies in our way, we mow it down. If Plan A doesn’t work, we go to Plan B.

When things don’t go our way, we figure out a way to make them go our way.

But, certainly, this pandemic isn’t the only example that we can summon to our minds of situations that exist, beyond our ability to control.

Immediately, weather occurs to me.

But, the thing about that example is that weather, even in its most inconvenient of forms, tends not to last very long. At least, not in comparison to a global pandemic.

This leads me to an interesting side observation –> maybe the real pandemic –that we’ve been suffering from for years– is a lack of patience. Tell me you’ve never seen someone –or you’ve never
yourself– lost your patience, after only a moment or two of inconvenience. I know that I have (today, if I’m being honest).

Whether it’s the weather or a global pandemic, we just don’t do well when we’re not in control; we prefer to determine for ourselves how things will go.

Anybody else’s illusion of control laying shattered on the floor right now?

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Additionally, having to use the word ‘maybe’ more often these days makes people uncomfortable. Last year, in August, if you’d asked me if I was going to be teaching in a school in November, the answer would have been, “Yes” –> and I would have looked at you funny. If you were to ask me if I am going to be teaching in a school in November right now, I’d have to say, “Maybe”.

This is emotionally taxing, to say the least. I have a friend, whose identity I will protect, who is in school administration. This friend was telling me the other day, about the uncertainty that all schools are dealing with right now, this friend said to me, “Phil, I’m just exhausted, mentally exhausted. I’m drained from trying to figure all of this out. I’ve never been this tired.”

And this friend of mine, that I speak of, is a work-horse, so tired doesn’t come easily for them.

In fact, I’ve noticed that people are starting to lose their cool more and more lately. I’ve seen on Facebook the same copied post on several Facebook streams in the last few days, a post that talks about “end scenarios” and “getting back to normal”. Six months into a global pandemic and people are losing their minds.

Have you ever seen that scene in the horror movie where the good guy just has to remain perfectly still and quiet for a few seconds until the bad guy decides to go look somewhere else. How does it usually go? The good guy sneezes, or the good guy drops something, or the good guy steps on a squeaky floor board; at that point, it’s all over, the bad guy knows and then chooses to strike.

Inevitably, there’s something about just staying calm for a limited amount of time that seems beyond us.

But look, I get it. It’s hard to stay positive. It’s hard to stay optimistic. And, because we’re not used to having to do it for very long, we lack the stamina to be able to maintain our positivity or our optimism for any significant length of time.

And, if you really want to know what I think about the idea of ‘getting back to normal’, I think it’s a lie that we are telling ourselves to help us to get through the days. I think normal may have left us all back in March.

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I am going to cover this topic some more in my post for tomorrow, so I will dispense with some of those further discussions until then. But, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how disappointing it is that this has become a political issue for so many people. If you’ve been reading my blog posts for any particular length of time, then you should have a pretty good sense of where I stand, politically. The problem that has recently come to light, in my mind, regarding the pandemic, and the political nature of the fallout from the pandemic, is this: rather than using our heads or even –perish the thought– our hearts, to help us decide how we’re going to navigate the ins and outs of the pandemic, WAY TOO MANY PEOPLE have decided to hand over the keys to their brains and their souls to politicians, to leave it to them to tell us how to handle ourselves during these unprecedented times.

This is dumb. And we should stop doing it. Once the politicians discover that we aren’t going to do any thinking at all, once they discover that we are totally okay with leaving the thinking up to them, then we are all screwed.

Of course, I am okay with you questioning the politicians that I question. I am, interestingly enough, also okay with you questioning the politicians that I have come to respect and trust. What I am ABSOLUTELY NOT OKAY WITH is you not thinking at all when it comes to what it is that you are being told by the leadership, and the reason that I am not okay with this is that I will NEVER stop questioning what it is that I am hearing from politicians.

More to come tomorrow…