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What About This? By Wayne William Cipriano

By Wayne William Cipriano

What a fabulous opportunity we had.

We were attacked by a virus that struck and injured and killed indiscriminately. No gender, no age, no religion, no political persuasion, no geographic location, no social nor economic class or condition, no level of education, no possession of talent of any sort provided immunity. Any of us might be struck down.

We are at war with a virus. And, unlike so many wars in our past we had no friends who now happened to be classed as enemies, no family recently immigrated from an enemy’s homeland, no relations still living among the enemy. We had no business relationships with our enemy, no ties with that enemy that proved difficult to sever. We had made no promises, no treaties, there were no conditions that made attacking this enemy virus inconvenient.

When we went to war we were all in, all ready to fight this viral enemy. Even those who in the past were reluctant to go to war against enemies of our country because these reluctant ones believed that taking human life was always wrong, was the province of God alone, was philosophically inconsistent with a view that celebrated life unconditionally, none of these positions was extant- we were all ready to deal whatever death blows were required to take existence away from this enemy, this Covid.

And when we were offered this single unifying campaign against a terrifying, merciless enemy that happened to occur when we as a country seemed to be drawing apart,  did we put aside these dividing factors and join together to destroy an enemy that had no friends, no relatives, no connections, nothing that stood against totally, ruthlessly destroying this universal enemy? Did we embrace one another? Did we consolidate our resources? Did we unleash our much more than considerable, our almost incalculable might and truly indomitable will, to destroy this enemy?

What did we do? What did I do? What did you do? What a deeply uniting opportunity we had that would benefit all of us. And how did we handle that opportunity?

Well, that was the past. That’s over now, no matter what we did. What will we do now? Have we learned anything at all? Was there anything to learn?

What do you think?