Achieving, Enduring, Ennobling

 NEARLY TEN MONTHS IN, and the lord and vaccines willing, the end is in sight, but my life has scarcely if at all changed during the pandemic. I occasionally reach out to old friends, near and far, sometimes leaving my house. They rarely reach out to me, sometimes they don't respond to voice and email, and when they do, they seem somehow faint in appreciation. Perhaps they are depressed. I'm almost always alone from humans, but never lonely. I have my cats whom, in any case, I prefer. I have a good friend whose friend died a little over a year ago from an painkiller overdose. His pain is gone. My friend's restaurant chin is sagging beneath the weight of the collapsed economy, and he says that his severe diabetes is the least of his physical ailments.I will never know the joy or pain of having children, nor the pride and worries of owning a successful business, and my steady exercise over decades has seemingly kept me in good health. A high school girl on the radio opined that she has lost all her friends, not realizing that they are still her friends, but merely lazy, preferring immersion in video games, movies, and music while quarantined at home to the effort required at actually communicating.The ones she has lost, if any, she never needed. A lady on teh radio bemoaned her isolation, and the recent death of her unborn baby. So poignant was her voice,,,,, so profound her exuded grief, that I could but grieve with her, and I would have cried even had I not been alone with only my cats to curiously watch. I wanted to tell her what many others have already told her: that, as Voltaire said, all comes out even when the day is done, and more even still when all the days are done. That her grief will be appeased, and that she and her precious baby will be together forever, in heaven. I want to tell everyone what everyone already knows, that many if not most of our collective societal afflictions are self inflicted, avoidable, unnecessary. that among these are the pandemic, climate change, poverty, war, and so many more.That we have the means to eliminate them all, if only we have the will. And I want to remind everyone what everyone already knows, that this too shall pass, and that, as Goethe nobly said: "There is no situation which cannot be ennobled through achievement or endurance." The girl will get her friends back. the lady will have her baby, and another. And we all will have our fear, our anger, and our disappointments appeased, if only we endure and achieve, and have the faith in ourselves and our creator to only do what is necessary, and that is, to live.