Please Stand By

This is a test. “Please stand by” for further instructions. As we wait in expectation. As we wait to make ready to go back. 

We are in houses and apartments and rooms but we inhabit a holding pattern. Time present is quite different from time past. Daily life is altered beyond recognition. Empty skies. Empty roads. Empty feelings that life is passing us by. 

My heart bleeds for our elders who want to savor every hour they have left but are isolated. It’s saddened for the millennials who’ve been taking the world by storm and are now shuttered. We humans generally like to move – and usually fast. So to not be in motion is especially difficult for our psyches.

The blogosphere reminds us that each week is filled with 168 hours. Hours we can learn to juggle, play the guitar or finally read Moby Dick. To pick up French, watch “The Wire,” or clean closets. Every closet. Even the knobs. We are urged, in short, to make good use of this opportunity that no one asked for.

Ovid said: “Be patient and tough; one day this pain will be useful to you.” 

Perhaps the buzzing, flickering black and white test pattern said it more pointedly.

“Please stand by.”