Lockdown or no lockdown. We still have the virus.

A plaster will cover the cut but the scar will remain forever, and it will probably bleed again.

I made up the “saying” above. I’m sure it can be found in some analogy or quote somewhere but I think you can kind of understand what I mean.

I ventured out on a few errands last week. Not out of the ordinary but for some still a luxury. Firstly, I went to my official workplace for a change of scenery.

Over the last few weeks I had become more restless and got the itchy nature of wanting to go out and work in different locations. I live nowhere even close to being called a village but it felt like the few square miles around me had become my world and I was starting to “forget” what else there was.

So, I took the luxury of driving to work 12 miles away just shy of the north part of the centre of London. It took me 1.5hrs (90min) which means the average runner would have got to work before me.

It was an horrendous journey in some respects and I was exhausted when I arrived.

My journey started smooth enough as the roads were clear and I was quite happy I was in a “safer zone” not taking public transport to reduce my exposure to the virus (my thinking).

This journey reaffirmed what I was dreading in that this would have been my reality before the virus. A polluted and jam packed London. Nothing has changed, but it has….it really has.

As I entered my company building there was an eerie sense of silence. I put on my mask and entered the foyer and those eyes behind the security guard scanned me like I had entered a top security bank. I actually felt nervous. He mumbled third floor and I hurried into the lift.

When I disembarked on my floor (as the only person in the lift) the large expanse of a once busy cafe social-forum-hall-type space had one person (again with a mask) asking for my name. I was legit and told to sit anywhere I liked.

As I walked and found a desk it dawned on me that this building is not an ordinary building. It thrives, no it lives for activity and there was none. A great film I’ve watched many times is called Gattaca about the purity of the optimum human. The floor felt like that and a cross between a scientific lab and a holding room for patients waiting to trial a new vaccine.

Ahh, human society eh?

Human society is trying its utmost best to “refit” into the world we once had. Companies, policies, venues are doing their best to make things close to “normal” again.

They are trying hard to make us comfortable to “get back to where we were but in a safer way”

A great film I’ve watched many times is called Gattaca about the purity of the optimum human. The floor felt like that and a cross between a scientific lab and a holding room for patients waiting to trial a new vaccine. But no people.

I took a trip to the high street. Beyond the hustle of reduced workers and the homeless were empty stores, fewer shoppers and a concrete facade that spoke like it was not long before an even bigger change was around the corner. That “second lockdown”.

I’m tired because it’s clear a new habitat needs to be born in order to survive. I never thought until Covid struck that I would be part of something so defining for human existence, particularly in the west.

We are trying our best on all fronts, whether it be going to a pub for a pint, getting children back to school, rearranging restaurants to accommodate social distancing to a trickle of fans in a sporting stadium.

The philosophical self grows stronger daily in that mother nature simply does not want that. Does our way of life need to change in such a fundamental way?

Before the virus we had a multitude of ills in the world and you did not have to look too far to find poverty, racism and major health issues throughout the world from cancer, other respiratory diseases, drugs and violent crime. So why are we tackling a virus to then say “success” and get back to something to a way of life that was multitude of viruses.

We’ve never had a lockdown to curb drugs and gangs or a lockdown on foods that contribute to obesity, so why now? This shows the ignorance and selfishness of those that govern but we cannot pin the blame on them only. You don’t know what you don’t know. Too much of the normal we had was indeed a normal that was not just or right.

I could extend to the general population but so much focus is put on elected officials to be making the right decisions and the decisions that change the way we live.

Why not look beyond the door?

Behind the shelter of “normal life” the bombshell of another potential lockdown looms and we find ourselves in that “confusing state” again. The thing is, this uncertainty unfortunately has all the hallmarks of a war….but we convince ourselves otherwise (in the West at least as bombs are not dropping from the sky)

More often than not I now the leave the house with a sense of uncertainty. It’s not only because of the virus but the uncertainty that those that cling to “what was normal” are blindly walking into something that will be far worse than what we have every experienced.

Behind the door is potentially a better future, a future we are too ignorant to want to unlock.

I’m probably a follower as well so the hypocrite in me prods me now and again…but I do fall into the camp of wanting something new. I only hope I can be part of the change.