Wednesday, April 8, 2020

The Incredible Darkness of Uncertainty


There can be no doubt, the coronavirus has brought the 8 billion plus people of Planet Earth together. It has united us in a way nothing ever has.

The unwelcome Covid 19 visitor has also brought an equally ominous companion, uncertainty.

Perhaps it's because I've been locked in my house for more than a month now and have even stopped visiting the local minimart to pick up a packet of gum and the occasional Diet Coke, but it feels as if the liquifacted ground that sits under Southern California has become even more liquifacted.

BTW, I'm not a geologist, I only play one on the internet. Much like the way the president plays a pharmacist.

In many ways uncertainty feels more threatening than any virus ever could. Fever, chills, diarrhea, those  don't bother me, I work in advertising.

It's the not knowing what comes next that unnerves me.

Particularly as a borderline OCD control freak who has been known, to friends, family and employees who worked on my team, to obsessively plan, schedule, execute and repeat cycle.

I can't tell you how many times my father would say, "If you want something done right you have to do it yourself." 

I don't know how you go about your life, but I like knowing what's next.

I like knowing Jeopardy is on at 7.
I like knowing what we're having for dinner before I decide what I'm having for lunch.
I like knowing what's going on around my house, hence the multi-camera surveillance system that keeps tabs on the squirrels, the noisy neighbors and the dogs who leave "presents" on my lawn.


I liked knowing. Or, more precisely, I liked the illusion of knowing.

Because now it has become clear I, and perhaps you, have been afflicted with pervasive uncertainty.

It's something I had better learn to accept, because it's clear there won't be any vaccine or cure for this.

Not even that hydrochloroxine stuff.



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