June 12, 2021, Commentary from downtown

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 June 12, 2021, Commentary from downtown: We are at another inflection point as we are flirting between real life and the virtual. Covid is probably coming to an end. And so, we must want to believe. So today at Zoom we are thinking about how enjoyable our Zoom has been for the past year. Do we still need it? Or are we in a space now where the virtual can be set aside and the real will take over. Like it used to be. Do we want to go back to where it used to be? Maybe not everyone. May be not me. There are corporations that are starting to think about how to learn from Covid and utilize this information to come back to a reality which is split between the real and the virtual. Someone called it the hybrid way of working. There is this sense of uncertainty. Went downtown for dinner. The restaurants are open, but our order took nearly 40 minutes. Would not be acceptable in the old days. A year ago. But everything in pardonable now, it is all because of the plague. One of my doctor bondhus said that the next wave will come. But for now, we are returning to living life IRL. Everything is good, we are coming back. At least some are, those who chose not to learn from the experience. The smart money is on saving money. I read somewhere that those going back to work are having to rearranging their offices. To make it look like the work place we were accustomed to. To giving up seeing everyone on the Zoom rectangles. To go from one conversation (in corporations they are called meetings) to another in a few mouse clicks. To actually see myself in the meeting, in one of the rectangles. To remember not to pick my nose. What exactly will be real from now on. It is stupidity to assume that some parts of our everyday lives have not been permanently transformed. Even though industries like education want to race back to the pre-Covid days and deny the learning that could have gleaned, many others will take this forward and find new ways. Ways that may not appear to be real – ways that will acknowledge the fallen -  always reminding us. What makes us better is to learn from what we have experienced. It is impossible to block out the reality of sitting in a basement and doing our work. Fortunate and uninterrupted. At this moment it is to answer Queen’s call “Is this the real life, is this a fantasy?”

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