Perhaps it was just plain ignorance. It might have simply been complacency. We have, after all, survived the end of the world a number of times. But this one caught us by surprise. Who knew that there would be so much to do during the COVID-19 end of days?
It turns out that ending life as we know it isn’t simply sitting back and realizing March Madness isn’t happening. No, there is real work to be done around all of the schedule shattering changes we are seeing. Travel arrangements must be cancelled. Statements must be generated. Planning calls are proliferating. Do we cancel or postpone? Do we webinar or not? On this site, clients advertising campaigns and the National Event Calendar must be updated to reflect (or deflect) cancelled events. It turns out shutting things down is as difficult as setting them up.
And to think we’re doing it all without toilet paper.
I was on a couple calls last week that were related to specific events that were being cancelled due to the Coronavirus scare. You can’t help but feel for people who have invested so much time and energy into putting together educational events, only to have to scrap their plans over conditions completely outside their control. People everywhere are looking for alternatives and pathways to normalize a process that in many ways simply is not normal.
And maybe that is the good news.
With an onslaught of news concerning draconian government oversight and limitations imposed on a willingly susceptible public, it is very easy to be depressed about current events. However, the human condition is not one to give up easily, and the fact that so much energy is going into workarounds and adaptations shows that we are not a species that accepts failure easily. After all, if we simply capitulated and cancelled everything it would be pretty easy. It is the searching for solutions and alternatives that is making things feel both busy and difficult.
Adaptation takes effort, and that is what many sectors of our society are doing. They are adapting to events occurring at previously unseen levels and working to make sure that the things deemed important are not lost.
Things will stabilize in a few months. Life will return to normal. What has been, in many ways, hyperextended hysteria will cease (more on that in subsequent posts). But in the interim, the desire to set things right and keep things moving will keep many of us busy and engaged.
And that is the way it should be.