Life is too damn short

 A new Siena poll reported the nearly eight hundred or so New Yorkers it surveyed have largely accepted COVID-19, and its protocols, as an enduring part of their daily existence. 

Most of those who responded said they carry a mask with them wherever they go. And while our confidence has ebbed since the feel-good-days of summer, we are showing more comfort in our pre-pandemic chores. A majority even said they felt comfortable shopping in grocery stores despite feeling the pinch of higher prices and supply-side shortfalls. At least the aisles seem wider now that the stores have mostly abandoned their one-way traffic patterns. 

Of course, half of those surveyed cling to the hope that things will steadily improve, despite transmission rates all over the country remaining exceedingly high, and despite some officials sounding new low-level alarms about the likelihood of variants of the variants coming in via elsewhere. 

Nearly three-quarters of us are comfortable eating inside of a restaurant. We're only middling more confident returning to the workplace. 

What are the options? Quit?

Well … another study affirms there is a Great Resignation afoot, with more than 4.3 million Americans -- nearly three percent of the entire workforce - quitting their jobs in August.

Calling in sick just isn't the same as it used to be, I suppose. Neither is juggling a routine that has been anything but routine. What’s behind all these numbers is still up for debate. But life, some economists now think, is just too damn short.

I still check the trackers every day, toggling between the CDC and The New York Times. I compare their figures to those of our county health department ... and the local school district, and no matter how I figure it, none of the numbers ever make sense. 

Seventy-six thousand cases today, 36 where I live, eleven the day before that. Nine for the week at the school. The two-week average is still flat. The county health department closed its building again and the latest school board meeting attracted the twelve loudest people in the county who think masks are the modern symbol of tyranny and will disfigure the faces of their kids, none of whom go to school anyway because of things they don't understand like Critical Race Theory or things they are afraid of like Halloween celebrations not to mention the War on Christmas that's been waged since a few lovely and caring people started saying "Happy Holidays" in an effort to be more inclusive. 

Sometimes I can't believe I ever got angry trying to make this make sense. 

I have done my level best. I have enthusiastically welcomed the vaccine for myself and my family. I have rolled with the punches of sometimes convoluted and always evolving messaging. I have accepted a moderate ability to adapt as my personal savior.  And perhaps most surprisingly of all, I have stopped staring angrily at the barefaced fools.

I have pushed up my sleeves and soldiered on even when I didn't feel entirely capable. I have laced up my shoes and run my fastest race, and I have set limits. I have made more of an effort to enjoy my neighbors. I have turned the other cheek. 

Just as our parents and their parents weathered the storms of their times and were forever changed, so too are we.

Life is too damn short.