“And the seasons, they go round in circles. We are captives of the carousel of time. – Joni Mitchell
This is my last article, and while everyone has been stressful, I will miss writing about my feelings during this pandemic.
The recent images of the evacuation of our embassy in Kabul seem haunting like our exit from Saigon. Just like putting on masks after the “stop signalâ€.
All progress on the COVID-19 war appears to be sadly and oddly cyclical. Are we going back to where we started in March 2020? Did we return to the Middle East where we went to South East Asia?
The circle game of our existence on Earth has been written and sung for millennia, and if there is continuity, it is because change is constant.
But when history repeats itself as with those two wars and the retreat of our fight against COVID-19, what should we think? Can we find answers on social media? In the Bible or the Torah?
Yes, the answers and the explanations are all there. But now at 73, I realize that it is only with age that most of us can “see” with our failing eyesight and with the knowledge that age brings, that all life long. is a continual circle, which history repeats over and over again.
Last week, Santa Fe New Mexican Business editor Teya Vitu took his group of COVID-19 ‘Making It Through’ column writers to lunch: two Brits, a motorcycle guide and myself.
It was one of my nicest lunches, and not because The New Mexican picked up the check. Vitu had assembled a diverse group, and we talked about a lot of things: whether Santa Fe should change or stay the same; what had become of us; who is right or wrong; and even though the uniformity of a rigorous historical style limited our creativity and imagination.
Was the Guadalupe Street mural a good or a bad thing? I found that I really saw both sides of every discussion we had. Did the monuments recall the worst things of the past, or did they neutrally commemorate what at the time was perceived to be the truth?
If I knew any of the answers, I would be paid for my columns! But I don’t. I just have my opinion, and now I finally realize that there can be no absolute truths about anything that is not scientifically proven and empirically provable.
We are all entitled to our opinion, except when it comes to public health and safety. Everything else is a shade of gray. Most of us are stubborn and ready to scold when we hear something we instinctively disagree with.
It seems that we have lost the ability to listen to the ideas of others and that we are divided as a people. Are we still the City Different, still tricultural or a set of warring tribes? I hope our best angels will help us find the answers.
Thanks for reading and see you soon at Joe’s Tequila Bar.
Joe Schepps is the president and co-owner of Inn on the Alameda and has lived in New Mexico for 50 years.
