Hypothesis: the exhaustion and heavy sadness I am experiencing in these pandemic times, in spite of (or maybe because of) my relative safety, comfort and privilege, comes from the work of seeing what I didn't have to see quite so clearly in the pre-pandemic times.

There's the price my comfort has always exacted on someone else. The grocery store workers, farm workers, bus drivers, cleaning staff and more who can't afford to not work even though they don't have safe working conditions, for instance.

That lettuce from CA cost someone something as did that overnight delivery of that little gadget I need to keep my online work life moving. It always has cost, but the toll used to be exacted more slowly and out of sight.

Then there's seeing the precariousness of almost everything. The shell game nature of it. The way that, when the wheels stop spinning so fast, much falls apart. Was it ever even solid? The pyramid scheme becomes most obvious when then the transactions stop happening.

And there is the reckoning with the fact that the powers that be are not acting as though they actually have the best interests of the people at heart. Some communities have known this for centuries. Others of us knew intellectually. But it's fast becoming visceral for more of us

COVID-19 is many things. A disease. A complex system. A measure of our interconnection. A reason to pause. A threat to our safety. A discontinuity with the future we thought we had. A threat multiplier. An inequity revealer. An economy disrupter.

But I'm starting to think it is, in being all of these things, most of all a highly polished mirror, or maybe a broom that sweeps away illusions.

One of our choices in these times is whether we will choose to stare in the mirror, or not. Will we see what is revealed or will we look away and devote mental energy instead to distraction and propping up comforting illusions?

Looking in the mirror is work. So is building up the illusions of normalcy. Both efforts might leave us exhausted at the end of a day. But, it seems to me, only one opens the door to a possibly better future.