No politician, health official, or vaccine can provide us with certainty. We shore up the best we can while learning to make peace with ambiguity. We shake hands with uncertainty.
As a parade of commercials open with, “During these uncertain times …” eyebrows across the country must raise in a level of incredulity as millions silently whisper, “Welcome to my world!”
When times were “certain:”
- Huge swaths of the country hemorrhaged financially long before COVID-19 became a household word
- Guilt lurked as a constant companion for parents of special needs children
- Marriages crumbled under the strain of disability
- Family members of alcoholics and addicts bore the heartbreak of a loved one’s volatile and unstable behavior
- Millions struggled to care for disabled loved ones and/or aging parents
- 22 Veterans committed suicide each day
- Fellow citizens felt the sting of discrimination
- Chronic pain persisted for so many plagued by disease or injury
- Death remained inevitable
No politician, health official, or vaccine can provide us with certainty. We shore up the best we can while learning to make peace with ambiguity. We shake hands with uncertainty.
My family has been living with this uncertainty for decades. Recently, in a sequestered room in a local community hospital, my wife fought the COVID-19 virus.
“Are you scared,” I asked through my mask.
“A little,” she replied through her own mask. “But I’ve been through worse.”
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