Total Recall
It’s late Christmas morning and most of the presents have been unwrapped and the bows and ribbons saved for another future gift wrapping while the wrapping paper gets crumpled up and thrown into a trash bag. Kim has perfected the Christmas morning program with everyone getting a big stocking stuffed with small joking wrapped gifts. The objective is to find things that are mildly appropriate and amusing and yet not so over-the-top that there is guilt associated with regifting them or finding a drawer in which they can comfortably sit unnoticed until a later date when they can be discarded. It is always far better to find things that are very useful and indeed go into service, but that is a high bar to clear for anyone in this day and age when we all pretty much have all the things we need and want. That last part alone is enough to ponder on a Christmas morning when there are so many in the world who do not have all that they need, much less all that they want. I will be generous and say that cell phone usage, for which there are readily available statistics, is a good proxy for those who have what they need. It is amazing to note that there are about 6.4 billion smartphone users in the world out of a population of 7.8 billion, so about 82% of the world’s population. Since 26% of the world population is under 15 years old, that means that there are very few people who don’t have much of what they need. Poverty statistics tell us that 9% of the world is in extreme poverty. Does that mean they have cell phones but no food or is there a statistical anomaly in there somewhere?
But it’s Christmas so let’s not get too tangled up in the depressing state of the world and those in need. My point is that we in this part of the world and in the reading range of anything that I write, are pretty much able to get by and not want for much. But our heritage and our sensibilities are geared towards buying gifts for our children and loved ones in the hopes of brightening their holiday spirits. The ravages of Christmas are most realistically seen on the morning after Christmas. The piles of gifts around the living room are starting to be gathered, separated and bagged for transport back to whatever place we each take the bones we seek to bury is located. The spots on the rug have had Folex applied and the games half-played remain in suspended animation while the lingering few presents under the tree sit in wait for those unable to attend the festivities to visit or be visited. Some people are already wondering when they should begin to get the house back to normal and start taking down the Christmas decorations. Those thoughts get shelved as we recall the theme of the twelve days of Christmas song and remember that traditions like that of Befana, the Italian witch of the Epiphany, the date usually earmarked as January 6th, mean that we must wait until the Magi come to visit us before we “strike the set” of Christmas.
An epiphany is, by definition, a sudden insight into the essence of the meaning of something. It is that spark of a moment when realization dawns on us that something meaningful has occurred. There is something about the moments after Christmas, and perhaps surrounding the Gregorian Calendar moment of January 1st, that gives us our annual epiphany, not only an Aha! moment, but also a moment of renewal of our faith in ourselves and our worldly pursuits. We are forced to spend a week after Christmas in contemplation since we know the holidays are not yet over and yet we cannot yet begin anew until we celebrate properly by ringing in the new on New Years and then give ourselves a brief recovery period to gird our loins and steel our resolve to get up and get going.
This interregnum is a uniquely contemplative moment of reflection, and perhaps especially so during a global pandemic. I’m not sure why this year should cause that sort of thinking since we had last holiday season to adjust, indeed we have had almost two full years to mull this over and it may be that all there is to consider has been considered, but I don’t think that’s how it works. No matter how long our lives and how introspective we may be, there is always a tendency to chew on things until new (or at least seemingly new) thoughts occur. When I was on the trading floor forty years ago I learned very quickly that for some people, every day in the market is a new and fascinating day. Some things they recognize from prior cycles and some things are different in either obvious or subtle ways. Those people love the markets and look forward to every new day in the markets. I was not cut from that cloth. Once I had gone through the cycle once, it all seemed more or less repetitive and redundant. There was less pleasure in recognizing a prior pattern and more boredom that I had been there and done that. I was not and am not a markets person.
Nonetheless, I do seem to be a life pattern person. Where others have been there and done that with regard to COVID, I am continuing to find fascination with the way we are all reacting during the pandemic in the changing settings of our lives. This Christmas is considerably different, or at least different enough to me, and our comfort/discomfort with the pandemic is itself in a different place that is somewhat hard to describe. Most everyone has morphed in their reaction to COVID after this long of a period of time. Some have maintained their vigilance and care to mask and minimize exposure. Some have become more cautious based on friends and family who have had untoward experiences with the beast. Some were always dismissive (either by nature or by politics) and remain somewhere between oblivious and blatantly dismissive, usually mumbling that we have to get on with our lives or that its about time we got to herd immunity. None of those in that last category are prepared to debate the merits of more caution since it involves admitting a lack of concern for the vulnerable or older among us and that never comes off looking good when it is worn in the open. And probably the largest part of us is just weary and are prepared to drop our resolve to a degree the way any longstanding corporal punishment wears us down. We know that being the last person to fall in a war is not a place we want to find ourselves, but fatigue is simply too strong an inertial force.
One of the stocking stuffer quirky gifts I got this year was an extendable grabbing tool that has a claw at the end that closes around the searched for object. It looks familiar and then we realize that it is more or less the same instrument used by Arnold Swarzenegger in the movie Total Recall to remove a marble-shaped tracking device from his brain through his nostril. It is a very memorable movie scene and one can easily analogies it to COVID for many reasons. We all wish we could go through the momentary discomfort of extracting this evil alien from our system and our psyche. But alas, we may all experience total recall at this time of year. Perhaps it is just family and personal recall, as is the norm, perhaps it is COVID recall for all it has done to and changed our lives and perhaps it is a combination of both so that we contemplate how our lives are operating and are likely to operate in this new world and new normal that inevitably includes COVID in whatever form you care to think of it.