Five Years On

Treading water, staying afloat

“Hey, have you heard of this virus that came from China? They’re saying there are cases in North America now,” the young lady who habitually took the seat next to me in the front row of our class commented as she took her notebook out of her bag and sat down.

“Yeah I heard about it last week. Whatever, it’s a virus,” I said, putting my coffee mug down and getting out a pen for note-taking.

“Alright class, settle down. A quick reminded before we start today’s lecture, for those of you who haven’t yet submitted your term paper topic for my approval, the deadline is Friday.”

This is my first memory of what became the pandemic. I was three quarters of the way through year 3 of my 4-year degree in psychology. It was the last in-person lecture I had, as two days later, March 13th 2020, an email arrived saying classes were suspended for one week, after which time they would resume on-line only. A link would be sent detailing the mechanics of how the shift to on-line learning would take place.

I finished that semester on-line and then proceeded to do my last two semesters virtually. I worked as a TA for the final term and recall many of the students raging through their Zoom-squares about the employers of their part-time jobs - cashiers at gas stations or pharmacies or grocery stores, the only commercial businesses permitted to operate – requiring their presence. It’s not SAFE!!!!! They screamed.

The ‘vaccines’ began rolling out January 2021, by age group. I obtained my diploma in May, just as the 45-50 age group was being processed. The summer went on, and by the time the next school year began, the jabs had become available to anyone over the age of 16, and the school enacted a mandatory vaccine to attend. If I had been missing even a single course, I would not have been able to do it. Graduated by the skin of my teeth I did.

Five years on, I’m asking myself what the most significant lasting effects have been for me.

The first thing that comes to my mind when I try to answer this is how hugely important the small pleasures of life have become. During the worst of it, the nightmarish fall and winter of 2021-2022, when we unvaccinated ones were essentially under house arrest, and my nightmares took on horror-movie (or perhaps historical documentary film) proportions - when I could feel the animosity and urge to scapegoat emanating from my neighbors and extended family, and envisioned military knocking on my door and hauling me out, when Premier Legault threatened a tax on unvaccinated people - the ability to run on my treadmill, spend time outdoors in my own yard, sleep in a comfortable bed with clean sheets, or take a hot bath, became my treasures.

Like many of the people who held fast and refused to be jabbed against their will, and who have suffered life-changing effects from this pandemic/plandemonium, things never “returned to normal” for me. Five years on, my life has is still on a far lower ‘plane of happiness’. There has been no bouncing back. I continue on in a state of chronic low-grade depression, where the things I value most are those small things. Healthy food. Hot baths. A good run. Sunshine on a warm summer day. Completing the crossword puzzle I do daily. Watching my dog devour a chew-stick. Five years on, these are still the highlights of my life.

With regards to the school element, I sometimes wonder if that would have turned out differently had covid not happened. At the time the WHO declared a pandemic, I was in the Honors program. I only chose a thesis advisor over the summer, and when that was supposed to kick off in September, after the first two meetings I freaked out, overwhelmed by the whole thing, stressed beyond my limit, and dropped out of honors. If classes had been in person, if I’d been able to physically walk into my advisor’s office and sit next to her, connect face to face, would I have been able to handle it? One thing I am certain we all learned was the vast difference between interacting with people through Zoom or email and interacting face to face. It is simply not equivalent. We evolved over millions of years to relate to one another in person. And if I had stayed in Honors, would I have been accepted into a master’s degree? Would I now be a psychologist? In retrospect, I’m not sure how I feel about that. In some ways it might have better. Financially for sure. But if my lifeline had followed that path, what I did instead – write the novel I’d been dreaming of writing for almost 30 years – would never have happened.

The other very obvious lasting effect, the way my life and who I am would be completely different in the no-pandemic-alternate-universe, is my perception of the world. Whether you prefer the kicked-me-out-of-the-Matrix metaphor or the exited-Plato’s-cave metaphor, you all understand what I mean. And for those of who saw The Matrix, you’ll recall that the real world Neo ends up in is far less pleasant. Quite frankly, it’s nicer to stay in the Matrix. And as an aside, since I’m single, it also makes it way harder to find a romantic partner, because either I’m going to limit myself to the population of people who have also exited Plato’s cave, or I’m going to take on the Herculean task of trying to drag someone out, and I don’t have the mental/emotional resources for that. My chronic low-grade depression and general sense of misanthropy don’t help, mind you, and that’s on me, but as it stands, my prospects for finding a compatible mate are asymptotically approaching zero.

On the topic of how my perception of the world has been dramatically altered, within that is how I see my own country and fellow citizens, something that has become quite the hot topic lately. Mark Carney, a Globalist-Elite Great Reset planning villain, installed when Trudeau was forced to resign in shame, has called an election for April 28. In the circle of podcasts that I listen to, people are expressing incredulity and fury at how what seems to be a large majority of our fellow citizens are intending to vote for him. Here’s an example of one:

While I agree 100% that it’s beyond absurd, and agree with the fact that incredulity and fury are what non-cave-dwellers would naturally feel… I’m no longer experiencing it myself. It reminds me of how I felt when it first dawned on me that something was very wrong with the narrative, around May of 2020. That sense of being forced to repeat to yourself “is this really happening? Is this a joke? Am I in the twilight zone?” Given how 90-something percent of Canadians simply swallowed whole the entire covid narrative, I am not at all surprised those same people will vote for Carney. What I learned during covid is that Canadians not only don’t value freedom, individual liberty, personal reliance, the way Americans do, they actually view unquestioning compliance and obedience as a virtue. I recall a conversation with my former gentleman-friend about this; he said, and I quote, “Freedom isn’t even a thing for Canadians.” Later in the same conversation he maintained the need to obey all the laws, regardless of whether you think they’re correct or just or fair. I can’t help thinking, looking back on those conversations now, how close “just obey the rules” is to “I was just following orders.” But his view was the majority view; if the majority held that view, it’s no stretch to predict the same majority will put Carney in power.

The other thing that pops when I think now, five years on, of the impact the pandemic had on me, is how much Letting Go has become a supremely important hurdle for me to jump over. Because the issues surrounding covid were a part of my break-up, for a long long time after that relationship ended I maintained an intense level of attachment to any stories hitting the news that supported my views. Every time a new bit of truth came out – every time Ed Dowd posted something on X with indisputable data on excess mortality, when the Senator Johnson hearings were held, when the plasmid contamination was revealed, and on and on, I would find myself thinking Happy now asshole? But of course, who knows if he saw those things. There are still plenty of people who have never heard a single word countering the Safe & Effective message. I still see people walking around (outdoors, on empty streets) with masks on. For a long time I was deeply invested in the idea that the Truth would come out, be splashed across all the newspapers, headline the New York Times and CNN and BBC. I was waiting. But waiting necessarily means one’s life is on hold.

In fact I recall vividly a conversation I had with him about ‘the truth’, and he stated that “the truth always come out in the end, although sometimes the end takes longer than we would like. But it always does.”

This is an error in thinking. If you imagine 10 scenarios, major world events, where the truth was deliberately hidden from the public, and as years go by, in 5 cases, the truth comes out. What the public believes is that there were 5 cases. By definition they do not know about the other 5 where the truth never came out. So in any and every situation in which the truth did not come out, we-the-public are unaware that there even is a hidden truth. It’s part of what Daniel Kahneman refers to as the WYSIATI phenomenon in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. What You See Is All There Is.

And aside from that, as I’ve shifted my focus and begun to learn about all kinds of other stuff, it’s obvious that in tons of cases the truth is out there but no one is looking anyway. So in fact it makes no difference if ‘the truth comes out.’ I had to let go of my desperate need to be proven right. The level of intensity of emotion being felt by those Canadian podcasters who are furious at those still intending to support the Liberals, to vote Carney into office… I can’t maintain it. I have had to let go of my attachment to all of it, all the events happening in the world outside my door. It’s unsustainable to live the rest of my life that way, raging at the stupidity and insanity of the world. If I was to keep fueling my need, my requirement for my views to be vindicated in order to move on, I wouldn’t move on. I would stagnate, stalled forever in a state of rage and fury. But the thing about letting go is that once you’ve let go… the thing you were holding on to is gone. If you envision the holding on as though holding on to a rope in mid-air, when you let go you can either fall or learn to fly. Maybe a better visual analogy might be in deep water holding on to a life preserver. If you let go, do you sink under the waves and drown, or learn to swim? I like that one, because my feeling right now is in between – not sinking and drowning, but not swimming either. Treading water. I am treading water in the sea of life.