By Bobby Neal Winters
There is a quote by someone--I want to say Winston Churchill--about waking up in the middle of the night with your thoughts when all of your old wounds begin to ache. That was me this morning. Spurred by some dreams that I don’t remember about graduate school, I got to thinking about a thing that had happened. I won’t be specific--some of my OSU friends will remember--but it concerned an incident of faculty impropriety. It’d been swept under the rug. I’d filed it away, but last night my unconscious found it and brought it out to play with. Thirty years have passed and I have a different perspective now.
My new perspective caused me to reinterpret the events. Reinterpreting is like eating peanuts: you can’t stop until the bag is gone and the floor is covered with shells. I strayed from my grad school days to the current shutdown of the country. In the darkness, my mind ventured into dark thoughts that daylight banishes. By the time I made myself get up, I had convinced myself that I would have to start living on pinto beans and get things to barter by scouring the curbs and allies, pushing a shopping cart with a broken wheel just ahead of me.
Getting up, making a pot of tea, and eating a bowl of oatmeal turned out to be a cure for this.
Taking care not to spread COVID 19 is important. That has been made clear. But taking care not to spread gloom and panic is also important. It is a tight-rope we walk: We must be vigilant; but we mustn’t despair. We must fight the good fight and keep the faith. We must share Hope:
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