Skip to main content

The Year of Disappointment



Where I live there is a section of town called Nye Beach. In the summertime it is a place packed with tourists. Even in the winter it is bustling with activity. The local residents have many reasons to spend time there: restaurants and pubs that cater to a wide variety of palates, the Performing Arts Center, parks and of course, the beach. Yesterday, I took the above photo, and it was a bit sobering.

I have been avoiding talking about the pandemic in my blog. I figured, there is enough talk and news about that for anyone. But then I realized that this is a seminal event in our history. The world is now a different place than it was a couple of months ago. I should talk about it as long as I don’t wallow in it.  In fact, I think I missed a bet by not journaling about this from the beginning. It would be interesting to look back on those journal entries at some point in the future and see what I was seeing and feeling. But I didn’t.

I am a fan of the University of Oregon’s basketball teams and this year both the men’s team and the women’s team won their respective Pac-12 championship games. The women in particular were ranked number 2 in the nation and seemed on a collision course with South Carolina for the national championship game. This seemed to be their year! A week later the tournament was cancelled. Of course, it was very disappointing to me, but then I reflected how devastating it must be to the players. My disappointment pales in comparison. Then, the players disappointment pales when compared to families who have lost loved ones to the virus. It makes you realize that you need to not worry about the small stuff. And most of the stuff we tend to worry about is small stuff.

2020 is the year of disappointment. Everyone, I don’t care who you are, has something to be disappointed about. School is over. Sports are over. Theater, movies, parties: not going to happen for a while. Even someone like me (who is fortunate not to have lost his job and is still working a more-or-less normal schedule, and has a spouse to keep me company) has things to be disappointed about. We can’t visit family and friends; we are mostly stuck at home. Some people have far greater disappointment and loss than me, but all are affected. No one in our country has gone through this without losing something, and some have lost everything.

Those of us who haven’t lost everything need to be mindful of what we have. We need to be grateful for the things that will keep us going, keep us motivated, keep us entertained and occupied. Be grateful you have a roof over your head; not everyone does. Be grateful if you have family; not everyone does. Be grateful for all the little things that make life bearable. This pandemic will last a while, but it won’t last forever. We all just need to bite the bullet, and do what needs to be done.

And remind ourselves to be grateful.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Trip Home

  My wife and I recently returned from a trip to New York to visit my son and his wife. What follows is an excerpt of my notes from that trip. Departure day. So we and the kids (adult kids) leave by 5:30 AM. These “kids” are night owls. They rarely wake before 10:00 if they don’t have to, so we appreciate the sacrifice. Daughter-in-Law (DIL) drove us the 30 minutes to the train station. Hugs and good-byes for her (we love DIL. DIL is an irresistible force). Son navigates us a route to the platform with fewer stairs than the way we came. We get a ticket and get on the train headed for the big city and Grand Central Station. I soon realize that this train is not an express train like the one we took coming out. Instead of taking a little over an hour like we did before, this one would take a little over an hour and a half. We stop at places with names like Cold Springs and Peekskill (on this trip we saw a lot of place names that ended in “kill” including Kaatskill, i.e. Catskill, and
2 comments
Read more

That 70's Decade

  Can a decade become a caricature? My teen years were in the 1970’s and none of us who lived through the 70’s thought our decade was going to be a figure of fun. When you are a part of it, you don’t realize what people are going to make fun of later. I think there are two reasons why people snicker when the 70’s are mentioned: clothing styles and Disco. Both things could be called extensions of trends that started in the 60’s. When the hippy styles of the 60’s became more formalized for the dance floor, the result was (in hindsight) rather bizarre. They did not seem bizarre at the time. People following present fashion trends never understand that they are wearing something that will be laughed at in ten years. Yes, I did have a pair of bell-bottom blue jeans (are they making a comeback?) The mere mention of the 1970’s conjures up someone in a ridiculous pose wearing a disco suit. We who lived through the 70’s just went about our normal life. There were quite a lot of things that ha
Post a Comment
Read more

Tyranny of the Masses

  I was listening to Benjamin Netanyahu on the radio. He was justifying his change in the law that removed power from the Israeli Supreme Court, saying that it was the will of the people. Majority rules. This made me think of “Tyranny of the masses,” a concept that notes: just because a majority of people are for something, that doesn’t make it right. I am sure you can think of historical examples where the people of a country supported a policy that was demonstrably wrong. When everything is completely governed by majority rule, the rights of the minority can be subverted by the majority. The framers of our American Constitution knew this, and tried to put in some checks and balances into our system of government. This was to guard against all forms of tyranny whether from a dictator, or from tyranny of the masses. One of those checks is that we have a representative government. The people themselves don’t pass laws, but instead elect representatives at the federal and local level t
Post a Comment
Read more