Overwhelmed
All of us are at least a little overwhelmed by the world around us. There is a lot happening in regards to COVID-19. Every company in the country has an official statement and updates are sent daily through every mode of communication.
I am overwhelmed by a culture in which everyone needs to be an expert on the latest relevant topic.
I am tired of hearing the following words that used to have meaning but now feel like buzz word that will be scarred into history for this time period:
Cases, hospitalizations, deaths, beds, vents, masks, quarantine, isolation, social distancing, pandemic, epidemic, tests…
These words are all overused and it has become numbing.
Weeks one, two, and three of major coverage of COVID, I was shocked by the frequent updates of cases and deaths. I had a chance to think of the lives being affected and the people who were impacted.
Now that numbers are in the millions for cases and hundred thousands for deaths, it all kind of looks the same in the updates.
Understated
At the same time, these words that I am exhausted of should be reaching my heart.
Close friends around me have relatives passing away from this disease now.
I wake up. I check the numbers on Google; deaths are up from 177,459 to 184,066. My face covering goes on, and I drive to work like I have always done.
These numbers all around us are understating the individual lives that are being impacted because we all have access to world news all the time.
Why do I easily know the statistics for this pandemic world wide while not knowing who in my town or even on my street is struggling.
We can see the daily lives of celebrities in their homes easier than we can talk to the ones we live near.
It is nice to see the world banding together to flatten the curve and keep those big numbers less big. On the other hand, it would also be nice if we would care that much about the guy next door, as annoying as they can be at times.
I might be stealing this from somewhere because it is by no means a new concept – you cannot say that you care about the whole world if you don’t care for each individual in it.
Find a way to highlight the individuals that comprise of those big numbers. This will give us time to comprehend and close the gap between the overwhelming and the understated.