Today’s Daily Stoic writing prompt:  Instead of calling it bad luck, can I come to see it as inevitable?

A hard one to read and respond to, as I prepare to observe the first anniversary of the dedication of this blog to the diaries of my—of the world’s–besiegement.

Was this all inevitable?  

We know so much of it was not.  The virus?  That was bad luck.  The consequences?  Not so much–both for better and for worse.

It was likely inevitable that the world face a global pandemic.  That had been predicted for years.  

It was certainly not inevitable that we’d have vaccines within a year–less, really, as we’ve now had a couple of them for a couple of months.

Was it inevitable that it would become a political issue?  Certainly.  What was less inevitable is how devalued science had become in some areas that people would choose to follow a political leader rather than scientists when it came to how to counteract the virus.

Was it inevitable that our long-term care homes would suffer such losses?  Yes, perhaps, given the warnings we’ve heard for years.  But also, no, because of those same warnings.

The question here is not to look to the past and debate inevitability.  The challenge is to learn from the present for the future.  

*****
First draft of the article is done.  I realized around dinner time that if I kept writing as much as I originally was the thing would end up being five pages long, and that’s too much.  It’s now just over two, and since there will be images, that’s much better.  

Also done:  The cross stitch above.  There was a LOT of thread chicken involved, a nd a few substitutions as a result.  But the overall integrity of the design was not impacted.  And I love it.  The colour scheme, the cats, the stars, the fire.  It’s just so me.  Time now to queue up Crossbow Cat.  I may yet do that this evening.

Tomorrow is the official anniversary of the Siege Diaries.   As of today, I’ve been going 152 days since starting up the Daily Stoic prompts.  I also wrote every day for the first 100 days, and 25 times between the two runs of writing daily, for a grand total of writing for 277 days during the first year of the “siege.”  

I found this lovely little Shostakovich piece today.  Best two minutes I’ve spent in some time.