I arrived late to an outdoor lunch and joined the conversation in the middle. On leaving, I mentioned how awkward I feel in a social setting, even with close friends. The others responded by saying that’s what they had been discussing just before I arrived.
At the November HIRRA meeting, our president began her executive report by saying: “These days when I am greeted or I greet someone, a common one is: ‘How are you doing?’ Mostly I cannot answer. I think, well I am doing stuff, chores, tasks, loving my family and friends, but cannot answer how am I doing. I feel more like I have been placed in the middle of some agenda I cannot see.”
Covid-19 has thrust into sharp relief fault lines that have been visible for a long time. It is not the cause of those fault lines of inequality, systemic racism, and unsustainability. Rather, it is because of systemic racism that indigenous people and people of colour suffer more from the virus. It is because we, as a society, warehouse our elders in long term, for profit, care facilities where essential workers are paid so little that they have to work at more than one facility to make ends meet. That is what makes our elders and their caregivers susceptible to infection, sickness, and death.
I hear people expressing the hope that soon the pandemic will be fully controlled and then life can go back to “normal.” Yet, what was normal as we defined it was not sustainable. Our normal is still capitalist, profit driven, and dependent on never-ending growth, the very things that drive climate disruption and bring local eco-systems of all kinds to the breaking point.
Here on Hornby, there are those of us who chose to open or acquire businesses based on the assumption that things would continue to grow incrementally. That assumption was risky even before Covid-19 and is now even more challenging because of the pandemic. I am not surprised that this challenge results in an attempt to maintain the hope that the fundamentals are still solid, growth will begin again, and Hornby will have more short term rentals, camping grounds, eateries, and other businesses all doing well.
For those of us who assumed that something like this was coming, the experience is just as unsettling. Most of us older folks put in decades of hard work and were looking forward to watching a new generation grow into leadership while enjoying the company of friends and family. It is hard to accept, no matter how predictable, that casual visiting is now rare and cannot be done without preparation and planning. For those a little younger, the hope that we all can sit together and plan for a resilient response to the climate emergency now seems to face barriers that can look insurmountable.
When I suggested we push a reset button, I didn’t mean to try and turn the clock back to some earlier, imagined better time. I meant only that we acknowledge the anxiety which Covid-19 adds to our lives, adjust for it, and then slowly begin again to talk about how best to respond both to the realities of the pandemic and the need to “build back better.” It is not yet the time to begin a formal visioning process, but it is the time for groups of us to talk together about the assumptions that are being challenged and possible ways to adjust those assumptions so that we can adapt to the new reality which is being forced on us.