As a rule, I try to keep the contents of this blog pretty light. After all, there’s more than enough heaviness out in the world as it is. You don’t need to trawl too much through the internet or the media to find it. My preference is to try not to add to it.

But I guess every so often, you get to a point where trying to keep things light starts to sound like avoidance or trivialisation. And I’ve got a feeling that today I’ve reached that point. As I sit down to write this post, I can’t be all fun and games and flibberty-gibberty like I usually am. I have to get a little bit serious. You can probably guess what I’m talking about, but anyway, here goes.

The subject of this post is (surprise) stories. We all love to partake of them in some form, whether reading or listening or watching. And each of us, in our lives, is the central character in our own story. We have our own beginnings and middles. And, of course, we will have our own ending.

While each of our stories feels important to us, in the grand scheme of things they’re mostly kind of small. Sure, we will have an impact on those near and dear to us, but in the bigger picture, each of our little stories won’t seem to matter much. Which is generally fine with me.

But every so often, you start to get a feeling that the story you’re a part of is much larger than you expected it to be. I guess this happens to people who get caught up in great events, like wars or other international displacements. Suddenly, life isn’t just about what to eat for breakfast, or what the traffic will be like on the way to work or shall we go to the movies tonight. Daily decisions start to have a lot more consequences.

Of course, I’m talking about the Coronavirus. Certainly, in my life, it feels like the biggest story I’ve been a part of. We have no idea how the story will play out. Maybe, after a short and painful disruption, life will go back to normal. Or maybe it won’t. We’re still in the opening chapters, and there’s a lot of plot still to be resolved.

We all know the worst case scenarios. We’re familiar with horror stories like Black Death and Spanish Flu. But we also know humanity can be resilient, and science can achieve many things. Till then, there’s not much to do other than stay calm but also alert, willing to take the advice of experts and do what we can to minimise the impact and spread of this disease.

So look after yourself. Stay well, stay clean, and give everybody else a healthy distance. Lets hope this story reaches its best ending for all of us.