Episode 441: Best Lesson From The 2020 Pandemic

Today, I want to share with you my biggest lesson of the Pandemic and its aftermath as viewed through the perspective of a special friend.

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Main topic of the Show: Best Lesson From The 2020 Pandemic

This show was supposed to be on Friday last week. But my health got in the way. And yet this may be the most important show topic of 2021. 

This show is in part about the biggest lesson to be learned from the 2020 pandemic, how officials and our societies reacted to it, and maybe even a little about why what some of us THINK is the biggest lesson learned should be reexamined if it is not this lesson.

But more important about today is what got me to thinking of this lesson. It was a friend, fellow farmer/homesteader. A guy by the name of Steve who works really really hard to live life on his terms. Steve is not a young man, and he has even had an organ transplant. His ticker ain’t what it used to be either.

Steve is the kind of guy who meets lots of people and he somehow manages to bring out the best, to encourage them to just get started on doing what they say they want to do.

The longer you talk to Steve, the more you realize how incredible his life has been and the sheer number of things this man has done - and he has done them well.

And the best part? He is not a loudmouth like me -- he observes and is sort of quiet. But when he talks, people listen. And when he hears I cant from someone, he asks why.

You may wonder what in the world Steve has to do with my pandemic lesson? Well that is the thing. 

If I ask most people around me what their biggest lesson learned I will get one of the following lessons:

1. Supply Chains Are Unstable (centralization vs decentralization)
2. The Media Controls the Narrative More Than We Thought
3. People Are Anti Science
4. People Do Not Understand How Science Works
5. People Are Selfish And We Must Control Those Jerks
6. Big Tech, Big, Ag, Big Government, New World Order, Growth in Freedom Networks

And while all those things may be lessons you can take from the pandemic, which one is the biggest?

I must admit, I have spun like a pinball from idea to idea dn lesson to lesson over the past year and a half -- and YES -- we have been doing this for a freaking year and a half now my friends. A year and a half you will never get back. 

And last week, I started thinking about what you and I and others are never getting back (depending on how far we took things):

A year and a half of:

• Seeing faces
• Hugs
• Being together in groups
• Flying
• Going to work
• Income
• Birthday parties
• Hand shakes
• Building rapport
• Trust
• New relationships
• Stability and community

 

People have lost so much:

• Homes
• Loved ones
• Businesses
• Jobs
• Confidence
• Joy

All for what? An illness with between a 99%-and 99.5% survival rate according to the sources that so many have come to distrust. I pulled that from the CDC in case you are wondering.

Compare it to the flu: 99.5% survival rate.

Now we all know that older people have increased risk and I am not discounting that. But look at what we have given up? The hugs, seeing grandma and grandpa, crying over zoom.

Guys, we are herd animals. We need each other to be whole. Without community - even if we like being solitary -- without community we suffer. When we suffer, our health goes down hill. 

There were times in the last 18 months when people were drawing their last breath all alone in a room in a hospital, not allowed to have their children with them, holding their hands. For fear of spreading the disease, even if they were not dying from covid.

Which begs the question did that even make sense? 

Enter Steve. Steve is the kind of guy in an age bracket of the highest risk, with a compromised immune system. Know what Steve gave up for the pandemic?

Nothing. Not a damn thing.

Steve was in the hospital with surgery complications last fall for about two months. A week or two after he got out, he was at an event in Texas hugging his friends sharing his knowledge, selling his rabbit cages (and the man makes AMAZING rabbit cages), and having a grand time. There was not a mask to be seen at this event.

Know what Steve said about that? He said, I’d rather live the days I have left than hide from the virus. Steve knew his risks. And he knew the consequences of getting ill with Covid. And he knew the bigger risk was not living for 18 months of the time he had left. So Steve lived life and mentored the people he came across.

And therein is the lesson: The biggest lesson from the Pandemic is we only have NOW. Not the past -- that already happened. Not the future: that has not yet happened. We have what is now.

Right in front of us today. We have no idea hope long we will be here. We know that one day we will not be here. 

So for me, the biggest lesson from the Pandemic is to stop procrastinating the someday, to prioritize those things that are most important, and to do them. Now -- or as best as they can be done in the now. To live life and not put it on hold.

I’ve learned to make time for that friend to visit. To accept that sometimes things are not all put together because dammit I need to go swimming with my dogs. To travel to that workshop and be in person even though I might get sick from it. To weigh the long term and short term risks of things like a vaccination and make the best decision for NOW. Not last week and not next year.

And yes, part of living life is an element of selfishness. You have limited time here with yourself, your friends, and your family. What is most important to you? Is it them, then spend time with them. Is it learning something new -- then spend time on that. Is it expanding your community, go to that event.

You only have the NOW and you can’t control when you will go.

And that brings me back to Steve. Last week, Steve taught me this lesson in a shocking way. He got very ill and ended up in the ICU. And my first thought was this: He has no regrets right now. His wife told me the day before he landed at the hospital he had bought a brand new zero turn mower. She joked that she was going to go whisper in his ear that he’d better recover quickly or she was going to drive it. I told her to do it! Why? Because even if he did not recover, whatever part of him could hear her through the coma would find humor in it.

At that is Steve.

Guys, Steve did not recover. He passed yesterday having lived a very long, ful life learning new things, helping so many people, and going out during this pandemic even though he knew the risks he would face if he contracted covid. 

I will miss Steve so much when he is not at the events we frequent, when I realize I need rabbit cages and had not gotten around to putting in an order, when I see someone in the corner that could use pulling out and he is not there to do it, when the big end of event bear hug is missing.

But I am also glad for Steve that we was running around buying a cool new mower the day before he had a stroke that ultimately killed him. That’s right - he lived his life through the pandemic, knowing the risks. And the virus did not get him -- it was simply his time.

But he had one last lesson for me too - and I hope you can take it on. That you hear this and think, what am I not building that I want to be? Who have I not visited out of fear? What can I do to live NOW?

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