Elder Advice – Thinking Inside the Box – Week 9
Along the Humber this week, I watched the passing legions of desperate, hollow-eyed parents and their feral offspring with more than passing concern. They don’t look happy. At all. I am more than a little worried that “Family” is becoming the new “F” word. It is clearly only a matter of time before the cardboard boxes full of small children start appearing outside the fire stations with the handwritten signs: “Free to a Good Home”.
My sense is that people are starting to lose it– that familiarity is breeding more than contempt. Violence may follow, which is terrifying of course because those who engage in it are not practicing good physical distancing. And once violence erupts, it is only a matter of time before we will be fighting apes on horseback.
We are all, I think, starting to fray a bit around the edges. Lisa, for example, has always been a tireless tidier but now it’s beyond obsessive – although I suppose I shouldn’t complain. When I need to pee in the kitchen sink, the last thing I want is to find it full of unwashed dishes.
So, it is none too soon to open the country up a crack – in a measured and logical way of course. Starting Tuesday, your housekeeper can come to you, but you still can’t go to your dentist. Pet grooming and scheduled hospital surgeries are green-lighted on the same Ontario government list. Which means grandma will be calling for advice on this week on whether to book Fifi for a nail trimming or get that hip replacement.
Thank god the liquor stores never closed.
Look. It is going to be messy and complex and more than a little unfair. And it is going to take much longer than anyone wants. But we need to keep our collective eye on learning the right two lessons from this:
1. That we need to ensure, that we are better prepared and smarter when COVID-2: The Sequel is released. It means serious advance planning and implementation of preventative measures. And we need to start now.
2. That we need to collectively undertake not to pass this problem on to our children and grandchildren. It means “belt-tightening”, “austerity”, “less government spending” and “higher taxes” – all words and phrases most older Canadians loathe and have taught their children to loathe.
The current federal spend on the COVID-19 response topped $150 billion this week. Here in Ontario we have apparently added $41 billion to the largest subnational debt in the world. And we are nowhere near done. No amount of creative accounting or government flimflammery can reduce or erase those numbers. Someone has to pick up the tab and that someone is us – the people who make the rules and those who have benefitted for decades from them. And the time to pick up the tab starts now.
For once, let us all commit to making a decision grounded in our undoubted obligations and not in our perceived rights. No whining allowed. No complaining that the spend was unnecessary, or that it wasn’t “my” fault or “my” doing. And no free pass for any “special” interest groups on this obligation. None. Instead: everyone focused on shedding our well-earned generational reputation for self-interest and committing to making do with less. So that those who come after us will have enough. Australian aboriginal peoples have a wonderful saying; “The more you know, the less you need”. Which we should adopt as a national mantra. Or to put it in typical Canadian terms: Having less must be seen as having more - more or less.
Less self-interest might even lead to the smug, self-congratulatory: “we are all Team Canada” bromide of Canadian solidarity that we have all been forced to listen to these past three months, actually becoming true.
In the meantime though, for God’s sake, get the bars open again. I need to know that there is a place I can go to see large numbers of beautiful young women. And be able to say, with complete certainty, that if I wasn’t married … I would be rejected by all of them.