Dripping Life: There’s no such thing as Paradise without a snake
Putting away the last shoeboxes, hanging my clothing and shelving newly-purchased textbooks in my freshman dorm room at The University of Texas, I remember taking a deep breath to ready myself for my first moments in Paradise.
I would have to attend classes, of course, but there was no one to tell me what to do, no younger siblings to be responsible for, no chores that had to be done on someone else’s schedule. Within dorm rules, I was free to come and go, pretty much as I pleased. If I didn’ feel like studying, a short walk to The Drag made it possible to take in a movie, visit a coffee house or shop for clothes. Ah, Paradise!
Yes, life was good…even great for the first few days, meeting new people, eating with friends in the dorm’s dining room (with cute waiters) and exploring what shops around campus had to offer.
But then, classes started. Enter the snakes.
That first week, I got lost going to almost every class. My Bass Weejun loafers were brand new and the extra walking created matching blisters on my heels. Aside from my Freshman composition and biology lectures containing 600 people and having to share a clothes closet with a roommate with overwhelming body odor, my life was racing away from Paradise at warp speed.
By mid-term, Paradise had left the building!
Anyone over 50 has lived through multiple iterations of Paradise – like meeting the person you will love for life – unless snakes named Infidelity, Growing Apart, Illness or Death intervene.
There’s also the Paradise of being lucky enough to land in the perfect career, achieving goals and experiencing success. But even then, the snakes called Outside Responsibilities, Corporate Mergers or sexist bullies disguised as leadership interrupt your climb and you slide down the ladder to where you started – basically Square One.
Then, one morning earlier this year, we all awakened to find our Central Texas Paradise overtaken by an untamed monster snake called COVID-19, a pandemic not seen since the Spanish Flu pandemic of 100 years ago.
Watching world news of this fast-spreading infection in other countries, we were told this snake was NIMBY – not in my backyard – yet, it was only a matter of time for this savage viper to swim ashore in the U.S.
Indiscriminately, COVID-19 slithered into the homes of rich and poor, alike. Race and religion did not provide protection. As the coronavirus systematically changed every facet of life in our American Paradise, this lethal snake also uncovered some surprising/even terrifying truths about our society as it sucked life from thousands: 1. We absolutely spend too much time chasing the American dream. 2. Some people aren’t cut out to spend 24/7 with their children and/or families. 3. Most children haven’t learned the art of entertaining themselves. 4. Although some of us don’t know our neighbors, we’ve learned we do need to. 5. Our faith makes us stronger, even if we’re not attending services in person. 6. More people than we realized don’t follow rules or think mandates apply to them.
As we watch the number of pandemic victims continue to climb, we are astounded by the toll COVID-19 has taken. Is this really possible in 2020? Is this really happening in this day of advanced technologies, in a time when we regularly send men/women to work on an orbiting space station?
Sometimes I wish I could wake up to find the past six months were just a nightmare, but intellectually, I know – we all know – this time in our history is, and has been, a reality…no matter how dark the hues of our rosecolored glasses.
And as we pray this snake will one day slink away from our lives and we have reconstructed our Paradise Interrupted, we will be forever changed. Our priorities may be adjusted, our traditions and habits altered…even the groceries we purchase may not resemble our grocery lists BC – Before COVID-19.
In the meantime, as our Paradise continues to be plagued by this terrible pandemic, our responsibility to our own and new generations remains simply this: to ignore the snakes and to find joy in every day, to love and care about each other, model an attitude of gratitude and strengthen our resistance against blaming, shaming, judging or falling prey to the meanness, racism, discrimination and hatred that have staked a bigger claim in our Paradise while we’ve been just trying to survive the invasion of snakes.
To paraphrase the protest hymn: We shall overcome these snakes someday.