If you’re like me, these days you’re feeling depressed, frustrated, even angry. Add helpless to the list. COVID, which is nothing more or less than an “act of God”,we can do nothing about. And despite our automatic reaction to feel entitled to better luck or different circumstances, Americans finally, faintly realize there are some things we can do nothing about, even if we don’t deserve the outcome.
Plague I can deal with. The sight of my fellows making violent war against one another in the streets and public buildings, I can’t. It casts the most dismal black cloud over my being. Those who disagree, those who can’t think rationally and kindly about themselves, our nation, and circumstances, should send themselves to time-out immediately.
Unfortunately, I know this won’t occur. The only idea I’ve been able to come up with has occurred spontaneously to some of my friends. Stimulus checks flooded the country in the spring. My husband and I decided to donate ours to organizations and groups who had been the most impacted by dismal economics. Strange to say, we both came up with the idea separately, then suggested the action to one another. Since then, I’ve learned a number of my connections have leaked that they did the same thing.
Now we’re to get more money we haven’t earned and don’t need, at least don’t need nearly as much as folks like food service workers, independent contractors, housecleaners, child care providers, and many others. So, yes, again we’ll donate these funds. It makes me feel the tiniest bit better, an infinitesimal iota hopeful.
Charities are changing their focus and the way they determine priorities. These days people need more direct services, and if a philanthropy is sensitive at all, it’s concentrating more on these. My private wish is for individuals to open their fingers, even to panhandlers on the street, many of whom didn’t ask to be there. They’re humans and don’t deserve the abuse handed them by some.
Don’t even think you don’t know how to participate. Every community has churches providing services to people in financial straits, food banks, philanthropic groups. Perhaps you have friends, relatives, or connections who are worried sick about the future. Yes, you can give to individuals and families. Wouldn’t you rather come down on the side of helping people rather than live in constant fear that you’re being cheated?
I learned long ago that I’m usually out of step with society and those around me. My political candidates are almost always the ones who lose. Unlike most Americans, I hate to shop and abhor wasting hours strolling through stores that urge me to buy things. Ditto ads. I refuse to own heaps, tons, and masses of possessions. They weigh me down and make me stress out. The only things I over-indulge in are books and sunflower seeds. I never used mind-altering substances, even in the wild 60s. Obviously I’m not part of the mainstream
At California Polytechnic State University, students can take a class in the Psychology of Aging. Since I’m qualified if only by my increasing age to know something on the topic, I recently joined a set of older adults from Colorado affiliated with a nonprofit called Senior Planet, matched with a group of students in the class. We met online via Zoom, as so many activities are conducted now, and got to know one another over a series of three meetings, asking each other questions about lives, beliefs, and lessons we’ve learned. 
As we live through our present, whenever that is, we tend to forget what’s gone before. Good, bad, and neutral, our pasts influence our present. Some of our changes are bad, like the COVID-19 pandemic and the major impact it’s had on our lives, our economy, and our very lifestyles. But it didn’t appear out of nowhere, nor is it the first pandemic ever to hit humanity. The plague, various versions of the flu including the 1918 Spanish variety, typhoid fever, cholera, and others were happenings we had to live through and learn from.
Bonnie McCune, author 