Another week on the road auditing projects, checking on our teams, and staying in hotels. Under the current COVID conditions this has become more like “Camping with Air Conditioning” than the normal routine of housekeeping and bringing clients out to dinners that I’ve come to expect over the years. In Normal times, I give a valiant effort to get my wife to feel sorry for me being away from home but she rolls her eyes and informs me that there’s a school project due or the dog crapped out half of my missing sock, ….or remote, ….or newly planted landscaping. (in case you’re not catching on there’s some bad blood between me and the dog) But today, there’s none of that. There is no school, my wife is working from home and training the dog and for me, well, there is no housekeeping or restaurants to wine and dine anyone. And on top of that it’s raining……..again.
So in I go to check into the hotel, this time the city is Lexington. In an effort to make small talk, I mention to the clerk “You guys finally get to open things up and see some normalcy this Friday, I see?” the seemingly shy young lady behind the Plexiglas shield that is supposed to protect one of us from impending disease replies, “yes I guess, but I’m not sure I want to. I wish we’d just stay safe for a couple more weeks.” It’s at that moment that I’m reeled back into the reality that to so many like her, this is scary and maybe even more reality than they can handle. We’re not all in construction, or some “essential” business as we now call is where we are geared to take on the world regardless of hazard. We’re not all in an industry where we calculate risk, recognize hazards and put together a plan to simply move forward or pay a consequence if we don’t. As a matter of fact, statistically, I’d think very little of the country belongs to that group.
I tried to backtrack quickly before making her feel even more insecure about the stance she obviously had struggled to find some footing on. “Yea I get it. That’s what seems so unique about this. Everyone has mixed emotions on what to believe or do.” That seemed to steady the vibe in the room and to some extent I guess I believed what I was saying. Am I even sure of my position on Covid-19? No, not really. I don’t get paid for that and right now I don’t even have time for it honestly. My job is to produce, end of story. Build a plan, build a team, keep wheels in motion and when we produce we better do it safely and effectively no matter what the economy, the political climate, or the pandemic. Sounds tough, but maybe that’s easier because I know what I’m doing tomorrow, even if at times it’s climbing a figurative Everest. The struggle doesn’t allow the luxury of time to debate who’s responsible for this crisis, and your view can’t be very extreme to the left or the right if your nose is to the grindstone. I guess I’ve been a bit consumed with that because there are always people jobs at stake and I take that personally.
The thing I am unsure of at times though, mostly late at night when I stop for a minute, is if it is real. Is this a natural pandemic or a scheme? Is the data reliable? Which causes worry when you’re wired like me to rely on data. Is the reward of saving jobs greater than the risk of sending people to work? Should we wear masks or is that a stripping of our rights? Everyone has opinions, but today I think a stranger in the lobby of a hotel answered that in a way that no politician, or journalists could ever explain. For a brief moment I didn’t care if Covid-19 was real to me, because it was real to a young lady that I had never met before that was fearful of her tomorrow. I’m trying to book meetings for next month and she won’t even go to a burger joint on Friday. So, sitting here tonight writing this, I’m not watching the news or reading Facebook. I am not listening to the self-proclaimed geniuses of either the left or right agenda blaming each other for worldwide pandemonium. I am thinking about how I will look back on this time in history ten years from now. Did I spend my time arguing about who is to blame? Was it a bat sandwich, or Trump, or the Democrats pulling the entire world’s puppet strings? Or did I pour my energy into making the reality of those who are affected by COVID-19 a better place to exist? Did I waste my time rallying with people of my same beliefs or did I open my eyes to see those people who don’t have room for an opinion on the matter because they’re consumed by the pain and stress of it all?
So that’s my challenge to those of you reading this. Those of you that have been fortunate enough to still provide employment or blessed to be in a position to offer support or influence. Keep an eye out for the hurting. Really talk to people (Even if it is through a mask) and listen. Do not let 2020 be the year of isolation, but instead let it be the time that we really got to know our neighbor because there were fewer distractions. We may never know if this COVID-19 pandemic was fake or real. But we can agree, there’s nothing fake about the father who lost his job, or the daughter who didn’t get to say a last goodbye, or the parent who couldn’t attend their own child’s funeral. I hope that at the end of another decade, the wrongdoing of a person or group of persons that started this pandemic will simply be a story and the RIGHT that was done during COVID-19 will be the history made.
“These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.”
― Abigail Adams
never-done.net 