Go trick-or-treating. Host thanksgiving with your big ol’ family. Open presents under the Christmas tree. Live your damn life.

You only get one, you know, and not a single day of it will ever be free of risk.

These are the most basic observations. They are not even profound enough to qualify as a memento mori, although a few of those wouldn’t be amiss either.

You are a hazard to others. Others are a hazard to you. This was true long before COVID—it was true when Cain killed Abel. The whole of human life depends on our embracing one another in spite of these facts, not on condition of their being sufficiently mitigated.

This side of eternity, they will never be mitigated. Embrace one another NOW, without condition. Be faithful with the little you have, and fear not to lose it—for unless you spend that little well now, how can you be trusted with much more in the life to come?

Anyway, the horror with which these brief and very basic meditations will be met in certain circles is an index of global madness, not of reasonable precaution.