My last entry in this blog ended with “Happy 2020!”
Ah, sweet irony.
Not that I’ve had a particularly bad 2020. Nothing like as bad as other folks’ 2020. Neither I nor anyone in my immediate family has come down with COVID-19. I haven’t lost a business. I haven’t heard a neighbor gunned down by deputies, with multiple bullets in him.
On the other hand:
- Two of my close friends are physicians. Both their children are physicians. All live on the front line and cope with both terror and exhaustion.
- The co-working office I used, Kleverdog Co-Working, has gone out of business.
- Another close friend, working in his front yard, saw the shooting victim bike past and heard the shots.
John Donne said it nearly 400 years ago:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were.Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
2020 has seen a lot of clods washed away, and I am the less for it.
A Study In Silver 