I remember being a kid in school, and we'd learn about some long-term crises, like The Great Depression, or The Hundred Years War, and it was so easy to read it, but so hard to
comprehend it, if that makes sense.
It's easy to read, "The stock market crashed in 1929, plunging the US, and then the world, into a horrible economic depression, lasting through the 1930's," but it was as if it really only existed while I was reading it, and impossible to really fathom what 10+ years of chronic unemployment was like, or how something that spanned a couple of lifetimes in scope could really be appreciated.
Imagine being born, living to a typical old age, and dying, all during a single catastrophe, or string of catastrophes. Imagine being a slave, born in, say, South Carolina, in 1740, living your entire life as property, and dying in, oh, 1805, with no end to that condition. That's what's hard to get across in history books. It's easy to read, "The first slaves arrived in such-and-such, and slavery was eventually abolished in such-and-such," and think, "Oh, that must have been tough, but we got there in the end. All's well that ends well!" It ignores centuries of people being born, living, and dying, knowing only that tragedy.
Being an optimist myself (though not that youthful anymore), I have to believe that This Too Shall Pass, even if it means some kind of long-term adjustment to the way we live (maybe it becomes standard to get a battery of tests completed before being allowed to enter another country).
I can't, however, accept that eating carefree in a restaurant or having a drink in a bar is gone for good. I can't believe that, at 54, I'll need to mask up when I go out, for the rest of my life (assuming I make it to 60), it just isn't fathomable.
I could be wrong, though. Maybe in 200 years' time, kids will be reading about The Massive COVID Pandemic, which lasted from late-2019 through the end of 2055, and they'll think, "Wow, they couldn't even eat in a McDonald's," and then unhook their Brain-O-Teach and forget about the whole thing minutes later.
