I’m tired, boss. Tired of being on the road, lonely as a sparrow in the rain. I’m tired of never having a buddy to be with, to tell me where we’s goin to, coming from or why. Mostly, I’m tired of people being ugly to each other. I’m tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world every day. There’s too much of it. It’s like pieces of glass in my head, all the time…Can you understand?
– John Coffey, “The Green Mile”
Are you tired? I think I’m tired. I’m not bored. I know some of you are bored. I’m not scared. I feel terrible that many of you are scared, unsure what you’re going to do next week or next month. How do you find a new job when the world is locked down? How do you work when it feels like no one is working?
And then there’s the elephant in the room. Except we don’t know if he’s in the room do we? He’s like this hulking, imposing, invisible elephant. . .who may decide to kill you in your sleep. Or maybe kill someone you love. It may kill those closest to us and the most vulnerable.
I’m a great crisis manager. My entire family is. In fact, when there’s a disaster, we are at our best. I never really understood it was something one could get good at. And, I never really knew I was good at it. I just knew that when things went bad, I found a way through.
Isn’t there always a way through? I had to believe there was. And all I had to do was find it. And looking for that way through helped me focus. And focus kept me on task.
We’re in a crisis now. The biggest one of my lifetime. The biggest of nearly everyone’s lifetime. People have described this as a war. Maybe, it is. But, we lack something that a true war provides. We have an enemy, of course. We have death lists. We have casualty reports. We even have battlelines as the virus, like some invading army started at the coasts, New York City, California, Washington, and relentlessly pushed it’s way toward the heartland and the Rocky Mountains.
The invader won. At least temporarily.
After 9/11 we were all encouraged to attempt to go back to a normal life. We were told,
If you don’t go shopping, the terrorists win.
Well, this invader won without firing a shot. The 9/11 terrorists couldn’t shut down our schools, our malls, our cinemas. No other invader has been able to lock us in our homes, afraid to greet our neighbors. Unable to attend weddings, or funerals.
Not even World War II was able to stop baseball. But, baseball died along with every other sport, concert, play and piano bar.
What this war lacks is someone to fight. There are no Germans, or Japanese, or Al Quida, or Vietnamese. Not that xenophobia is something to aspire to. And our former enemies are now are now some of our staunchest allies. But, we mobilized against our enemy.
But, not this time. This time, the enemy is unseen, but deadly. We are confident we will beat him. . .her. . it(?) We are Americans. And we will win.
Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. The very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.
You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right here today would be killed in a major battle. Every man is scared. . .If he says he’s not, he’s a liar. But the real hero is the man who fights even though he’s scared. . . The real man never lets his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood.
– General George C Patton, to the men of the Third Army preparing for the D-Day invastion June 1944
But, we can’t see what we are fighting. It’s in the air. It’s on that gas pump handle. It’s on the grocery store cart. It lived for 17 days on a cruise ship after the passengers were gone. It’s everywhere and nowhere.
So, our only weapon is to wait it out. The entire world is waiting. Waiting for a friend’s quarantine to end. Waiting for the test results. Waiting for the stay-at-home order to be lifted. Waiting for the medical miracle workers to find a bullet small enough to kill it.
I’m a crisis manager and while this is crisis, it’s not the kind where my skills help me. There’s nothing to do except wait. And that’s a lack of doing. So, we wait. And waiting is tiring.
I’m just tired.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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