One impossibility on top of another

“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

I was saying to my wife the other day that I felt like even if all we had to deal with was the coronavirus, and even if it was being managed sensibly, it would be an impossible load to bear. But we're not, and it isn't.

Instead we have a completely out of control pandemic with no end in sight. (They've already postponed the April marathon!) On top of that we've got the scariest election in my lifetime, rampant racial injustice, a completely unsustainable remote schooling regimen, and personally I'm still struggling with my knee problems which makes everything harder. That list seems too short, I probably forgot a few horrible things about this year.

I think that under the circumstances we're coping ok, by which I mean there've been no nervous breakdowns, nobody has been strangled, and we are more or less making our way through each day. But things are not ok, and they probably won't be even if the election goes the way I want it to.

It is hard to imagine how we as a society are going to pick up the pieces from all the damage that has been done this year. And of course thinking about it just makes things worse. So we watch our tv, I read my comic books, and we do our best to convince ourselves that things are going to turn out ok in the end.