Doorways

One of the side benefits of having Covid is that you get a lot of time to think through “ things.” I’m sure this concept isn’t the immediate stop on the train of thinking you have regarding Covid, but there you have it. Outside of trying to breath, feeling like you’ve been run over by a vehicle, and any other deviously perilous devices you can contemplate, thinking has an outsized role.

Now, I’m not talking about thinking through how you managed to acquire that insidious little virus coursing through your body. No, I’m referring to that more meta-sized concept of existential belief and reason. For me, it was those 3am insurgencies of “ I wonder ifs…” that grabbed ahold and left me churning about in my head.

I don’t recommend Covid as a means of philosophical acceleration or contemplation; I have it on good authority that Covid doesn’t always end well and, for those who are even moderately vaccinated, it still kicks hard.

This weekend, Covid acted as a doorway to thought: a painful, agonizing doorway replete with dry coughing, stale air, and a heaping helping of Dayquil, Nyquil, and other such medicinary accoutrements that I found beneath the bathroom sink. Much like the images you see here, it was a bastion to what came next, a guarded entry point.

Sometimes, we need to be reminded to pause, to take a break, to breath and consider. For some, it takes illness; for others, unemployment, conflict, or any other sort of disruptive action external to them.

All of this explanation is to simply say that I was reminded to stop and think by forces greater than I. I was afforded an opportunity, unwillingly, to start to churn through those ethereal threads of thoughts that had collected, like dust on spiders webs, in the recesses of my mind. And, in the coming days, hopefully I’ll be able to illuminate some of them for you here, on these digital pages.

As we start our journey towards the finish line of a year rife with conflict and chaos, I’m here to remind you, dear souls, that we have these moments, finite as they may be, to gently change the course of humanity.

Even a small bump against society’s hell-bent collision course of violence and insurgency is enough to, perhaps, stave off the course of more hurt, violence, war, and evil flowing from our lips and hands.

We are so wrapped up in our self-centeredness that we can scarce see what our impact is on each other and, my dear souls, we must, like no other time before, act.

May it ever be so.

Originally published at https://davegraham.substack.com.