I emerged out of the Covid pandemic lockdown bubble in 2021 but only really started reconnecting with many old friends and acquaintances in 2022.
Fast forward to 2024, what has struck me are the lasting scars the pandemic and the now widely condemned lockdowns have caused people. I now know countless couples divorced or separated. And many of our kids are irreparably harmed psychologically or developmentally. This is not some random observation but a trend I’ve noticed in a sample set of dozens if not a hundred or so folks in relatively deeper conversations.
I’ve widely written about how badly the lockdown affected my family for the worst. It caused me massive financial pain and due to my own weakness, led to the unintentional damage for the rest of my family. It also stripped bare any illusions I had regarding my ability to provide, how strong a husband and capable of a dad I was. O for 3 in 2020. Some of these, I’m still working very hard to sort out.
When I feel helplessness or fear, it quickly turns to rage. And in a situation where dojos, parks, gyms and churches were closed, there were literally no outlets for this.
Multiply this situation to almost every family in the world to different degrees of severity and you see the endemic rash of violence, suicide and loneliness of many young and old people now. The amount of broken families whether here in California, Canada, India, Australia, China or anywhere in the world. I know very few people unaffected.
The only good thing to come out of all of this is an openness now to therapy and the importance of mental health, things that were taboo to speak about prior in society.
Hellbound and Down 