This morning, when my cat, Cleo, and I, peered out the window and saw, in the growing morning light that the hills on the far side of my valley were clear, the dark smog had vanished and, once more, the air was the purest anywhere in the world. Covid-19 is like that. Here we are in the home stretch of a world-wide plague that has laid us low for nearly a year. It has given the world’s economy what might have been a death blow. It has sickened millions and killed hundreds of thousands world-wide. The morning is coming.
Now, when it is darkest, just before the dawn is when our inner strength and resolution is most tested, we must keep moving forward. As close as we are to a vaccine, yet just out of reach, it might not reach all of us for months. That hope and expectation is all the more reason to stay strong, do our work, lift up those around us who have fallen, or who are finding our lives too much to bear.
I see clearly past the darkness. You and I are winning one of the greatest battles of our lives; a pandemic plague which as bad as one from the middle ages. And we are winning. We are nearly through it and, I’m happy to say, most of us have survived.
I grieve for those who did not. I suppose it is the price of any such terrible plague. The old adage of ‘We are always stronger for having survived a great danger’ was never truer. When the vaccine is ready, and you and I receive it, we will have had an experience that will give us the knowledge and the strength to survive even greater catastrophes we may face in the future. We shall not merely survive but move forward to a wonderful future.
There remain, hanging over our heads, some terrible threats; atomic destruction, climate change, more pandemics, fire, floods, and for many in other parts of the world, famine. Yet I have no doubt that we will pass through more dangers threats to a great new world where we are kinder to one another, science has found cures to diseases we have yet to hear about, men will live with one another in better ways, and, sooner than we think, humankind will spread out to new worlds as we colonize our moon, Mars and other worlds among the stars. As early explorers proved our world was not flat but round, Just as certain as day follows night and there will be colonies and human civilizations on other worlds before our great-grandchildren are grown.
Are these things possible? I suppose some positive person, may have voiced the same impossible achievements to a cynical people a few hundred years ago… when the earth was thought to be flat, that disease came from displeasing the gods, and catastrophes were evidence of some angry God’s displeasure. If you had suggested DNA cures for all diseases, and travel to the moon, you might have been burned at the stake for heresy, for expressing ideas of a devilish nature.
So it goes with progress. For some, so it will ever be. But you and I know the truth. The world shall be a better place tomorrow. What is more, that bright tomorrow may be one that you and I may live to see.
© 2017 PAL PUBLISHING/USED BY PERMISSION
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