The fact that I’m even writing this message for future generations one hundred years from now proves how optimistic I am. Things seem like absolute shit in our time right now. We are more divided than ever. We're constantly on the brink of war. Those in power are completely out of touch with the common person. It seems like things will have to get worse before they get better.
But alas, humanity, with all of its blemishes, does one thing very well and that one thing is we adapt and we survive. I’m fairly confident that we’ll figure out a way to get past all the hurdles we’re facing in 2022. Life is worth it and we are worth it.
During these past two years I’ve said numerous times how much I wished there were more personal accounts/advice from individuals who survived the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. Unfortunately if there was any of that it’s been lost to time. Can you imagine how valuable some kind of a playbook would have been to us during the struggles of Covid-19?
Although I can’t go back in time I can jot down my thoughts, feelings, and advice gleaned from the experiences I’ve gone through these past few years. These pandemics appear to be once-in-a-century events. If the cycle repeats itself, sometime around 2117-2120 will be the next one. I will be long gone but with a fair amount of luck this Hive blockchain will have survived in some way, shape, or form and future generations will be able to have access to this.
An Important Message To Those Suffering Through The Twenty-Second Century Pandemic
How I wish I could see your future world through something other than my imagination. I imagine your world to, in many ways, be better, more equitable, and hopefully more peaceful. Many of you long to live a simpler life but remember nostalgia is an intoxicating and distorting emotion. The past isn't nearly as wonderful as you think. Embrace the time you live in and stay as present and be as mindful as possible. It’s my sincere hope that humanity has evolved beyond what we were during my lifetime.
This pandemic will teach you a great many things. Most of them are sad but, with the proper perspective, you can learn positive lessons that will serve you well for the remainder of your days.
1. Treasure your friends and your loved ones.
Treasure and keep tabs on those who are close to you, especially the elderly and those who aren’t particularly in the best of health. Treat each interaction with them as it will be your last. These next few years will teach about loss and will make you realize that nothing is forever. You will be taught the true fragility of life and also of friendships. People will become increasingly extreme and kooky, this kind of event does this to people but love them anyway. Unfortunately, many of those people who were your friends before the pandemic won’t be your friends after it’s all over. Try not to take this personally or blame them. This ordeal will change everyone in some way and sometimes this change simply means they aren’t compatible with the same people as they once were. Celebrate the good times you shared and treasure those memories but learn to make new friends. Mourn your losses, treasure those good memories, then move forward at your own pace.
2. Become more frugal and resourceful.
Plant a garden, learn to forage, keep chickens, set a budget, preserve your own food. Diversify savings and investments as much as possible, with pandemics inevitably comes financial volatility. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were saviors for a lot of people in our time (2020). Brainstorm now about how you can create several income streams to keep your family afloat during what might be years of financial difficulty. I now understand why survivors of the Great Depression (1930's) stuffed money in their mattresses long after the crisis was over. Trauma scars us deeply and can stay with us for a long time if it's not properly addressed and processed.
3. Trust but verify.
There will be societal chaos, confusion, infighting. Be aware that those in power may try to exploit you when you’re at your most vulnerable. Sadly, sociopaths are drawn to positions of power and it’s in their nature to exploit weaknesses. Above all, if you do take nothing else away from this advice please let it be this…learn how to think critically. Do not take everything you’re being told as the truth. Scrutinize every single thing the media and those in power are telling you during this pandemic and ask yourself what ulterior motives they might have for doing so. Pay attention to your gut instinct, always. When in doubt err on the side of caution. Wear a face mask while indoors or in a crowd…especially during the first and most deadly waves of the epidemic. Oh and wash ‘yo got damn hands (an inside joke from one of my pandemic experiences that you can read more about here.)
4. It will take a toll.
This pandemic will age you and it will fundamentally change you and everyone else around you. If you’re an adult you’ll likely look and feel like you’ve aged a decade in just a few years. Many children will, sadly, lose their innocence. Few things will be the same on the other side of this ordeal. It will feel like you're living in a different timeline altogether and in many ways you will be. Learn how to become at peace with it. You can waste years wishing things could have remained the same or you can view this as a kind of reset. You have no choice but to embrace it and use it to your advantage.
5. Take care of you.
Take better care of your health and well-being. There’s no better time than now to take personal responsibility for your general health. Set fitness goals, meditate, journal, don’t keep your emotions bottled up inside.
6. Take advantage of this rare pause.
Start planning immediately for your post-pandemic life. Remember that dream you always had but never pursued. Do that now! This downtime is a once in a century opportunity. Your life will be on pause for years. Use this time to learn a new skill or another language. Plan a future trip. You must have something to look forward to. Pick a destination and learn everything you can about it and make it a goal to travel there as soon as travel bans are lifted as a reward to yourself. Nothing, and I mean nothing, will help you get through tough times like setting goals and planning for a brighter future. Read those books you've been meaning to and don't forget to take a deep breath from time to time.
7. Be prepared for a long haul.
This pandemic will go on longer than you think. There will be many waves and mutations of this virus. Just when you think it’s subsiding a new wave will hit. Count on your life being disrupted for three years, more or less. Study past pandemics (1918 and 2020), the data is there in regards to how viruses evolve and how society reacted to it. This current one will likely follow the very same pattern.
8. Easy does it.
Be kind. Go easy on yourself and those around you. Trauma is strange in that when we’re truly in survival mode we don’t notice its effects. While we’re in the thick of it we feel alert and we trudge through to meet the next set of challenges. The trauma will really begin to rear its head after the worst of the pandemic is past. You might feel anxious, sad, angry, intolerant, or irritable for no apparent reason. These negative emotions are trauma surfacing from the horrific things you’ve had to endure. Cut yourself and those around you some slack. Give people time and space to let them heal at their own pace.
9. Support local businesses.
If your pandemic is anything like ours was small, local businesses will be hit extremely hard. Please support them throughout this ordeal as best you can. They are a very important component of the fabric of our society and everything will be better if they survive.
9. Life will go on.
Eventually this will all come to an end, likely in around three years. Be prepared for what is on the other side, which is probably close to a decade of healing. You’re craving friendship and you’ll want to socialize and make up for lost time but getting those years back is impossible. Learn how to agree to disagree with those people in your life who followed a different approach than you did during the pandemic. You’ve already lost years, make the most of the time you have left. Don't waste any more of your limited time on Earth to hate and division. It was an extremely scary time, as you will see, and I would like to think that we all did our best.
What advice would you give future generations facing the next pandemic? Please answer in the comments below or use this as a writing prompt for your own post. (Please use "#blockchainmemoryproject" tag if you do.)
Poetry should move us, it should change us, it should glitch our brains, shift our moods to another frequency. Poetry should evoke feelings of melancholy, whimsy, it should remind us what it feels like to be in love, or cause us to think about something in a completely different way. I view poetry, and all art really, as a temporary and fragile bridge between our world and a more pure and refined one. This is a world we could bring into creation if enough of us believed in it. This book is ephemera, destined to end up forgotten, lingering on some dusty shelf or tucked away in a dark attic. Yet the words, they will live on in memory. I hope these words become a part of you, bubble up into your memory when you least expect them to and make you feel a little more alive.
Pick up a copy of Ephemera today on Amazon.
Most of us have experienced a moment of perfect peace at least once in our lives. In these moments we lose ourselves and feel connected to everything. I call these mindful moments. Words can’t describe how complete they make us feel.
These moments are usually fragile, evaporating in seconds. What if there was a way to train your mind to experience more of them? It’s deceptively easy and requires nothing more than a subtle shift in mindset. My new book, Mindful Moments, will teach you to be much more content despite the chaos and imperfect circumstances continuing to unfold around you. Upgrade your life experience today for only $15.99 on Amazon.com.
Let’s Keep In Touch
Surely it will be a stepping-stone and shaping stone for future generations. Once what was utopian to many is now a reality, once which we could not quantify in terms of tokens, have become wealth now.
What a powerful sentence, everyone should read this daily when they get up.
Thank you Eric, it's really persuasive to read those lines. Have a great day.
Thanks for reading and for your comment @milaan! I appreciate it.
Hopefully the next "pandemic" will not be worsened by compulsory, capricious and harmful regulations handed down by unelected persons in alphabet governmental agencies. My understanding is that the measures imposed during the spanish flu were very similar to those of covid: masks, vaccines, isolation. Didn't work either time, if the stats can even be believed.
My advice today would be to not believe anything we are relentlessly told. Trust no one and verify all! And not through folks who stand to make millions upon millions from your beliefs and actions, because they are surely lying. Important!
I've studied the Spanish Flu pandemic, at least the data that's still available, and it played out nearly the exact same way in many aspects. People were protesting masks despite solid scientific statistics that they help lesson spread of the virus during the first few waves. There were quarantines in 1918 but nothing like the lockdowns of 2020-2021, that was the most troublesome aspect of this current pandemic in my opinion. Those lengthy lockdowns completely wrecked small businesses and individuals financially/psychologically and the more I learn about the vaccines the more I question their safety. My wife's ex-boss nearly died after her first one. I had heart palpitations for six months or so after my first.
What was happening in nursing homes and long term care facilities was even more atrocious. My father died in one in 2020. We discovered the nursing home withheld food, water, and meds for almost three days. When he was taken to the hospital emergency room (after we demanded he be taken) they discovered he was so severely dehydrated that his kidneys were shutting down and he was withdrawing from his prescribed opioid painkillers that he took regularly. We contacted lawyers but none of them would take our case because the Governor of Ohio issued a "blanket immunity" to long term care facilities to protect them against lawsuits. Something very sinister was going on there.
sinister is a good word for what is happening in the medical field world wide. Western med mandated, even when obviously harmful, especially in nursing homes. Those are death camps, turned more so during covid confinement. I'm so sorry you had that experience.
Spanish Flu mainstream info, like most government approved info these days, is comprised of fewer than ten easy to remember facts. What it generally lacks is info about the vaccines that were being heavily administered at the same time, especially to servicemen who were TADA the demographic that was hit the hardest with Spanish Flu. Same as today. We fall for the same fairy tale over and over again. It is not simple at all, except in google searches.
After witnessing what I did in those two nursing homes my father was in I'd say I have to agree. Both were owned by the same corporation and when my Dad went into the first one to be rehabilitated from a car accident they were putting all of the patients in the same small room for hours a day. Mind you, this was during the height of the Covid epidemic. Of course, Covid swept through and infected a large amount of them. When they were infected they were transported to facility #2 where all Covid patients were housed.
I can't even think about what we witnessed at the second one for too long. By the second day my Father wasn't even recognizable because of the bloating. They weren't even getting the most basic of care in there. We found out later the government incentivized those institutions by paying them for each patient in their care who had Covid, then they received more money if the patient died from Covid in their care and it was on the death certificate. Combine that with blanket immunity from litigation and it gets the mind working.
The more rational part of my brain always kicks in before I go too far down this rabbit hole but my wife and I have discussed several times how it seems like an orchestrated effort to reduce the amount of Social Security recipients. I hope I'm wrong about that.
I do not think you are wrong at all. I am so sorry you had to suffer through all that!
The stats on covid deaths or cases were artificially inflated so that medical entities, which would have gone out of business during the covid marlarkey, could instead thrive. They profited from hastening deaths, the more the better. I'm sure it was difficult to care for patients with all the measures they had to try to comply with as well, but I have no doubt that many of those patients would have lived, had they not been treated as they were. When people complain that covid did all this damage to our healthcare, our schools, our children, our small businesses, and our financial systems, I have to point out that covid harmed none of those things. The inane, obviously harmful and completely unjustified covid measures did the harm. I just hope the next time governments worldwide tell us to harm ourselves, many many more of us will say "NO!"
Thank you, I know thousands of other families had to endure similar experiences. Maybe some day there will be some legal recourse to make them pay (not that this would bring our loved ones back). Good point, the fear instilled in us is what caused the most harm. Unfortunately humanity has a very short memory when it comes to things like this, I guess this is one reason I wanted to create Blockchain Memory Project.
What would happen in the old people's homes and everywhere where people with disabilities and the very sick were cared for after this "state of emergency" was declared, I already imagined in the first four weeks. It is not difficult to imagine these scenarios of neglect and that the caregivers and directors of such institutions, fearing for their own lives, would neglect the one that everyone was supposedly so concerned about. Just think of the choice of words "to protect the old and the weak". It is one thing to frighten whole nations, one can try, but that it then happened, due to punitive legislation, and people henceforth did not know how to distinguish what they were more afraid of, the long arm of the law, exclusion in their professions or fear of contagion, was obvious. All those who let themselves be overtaken by panic and thought they had to be stricter than the Pope let their responsibilities slip and as a result those who were least able to take care of themselves were left alone: again, the old and the sick etc.
Some managers of old people's homes did not go along with this and did everything humanly possible for their residents, including letting relatives enter their relatives' rooms where there were any. They had to put up with all kinds of insults, such as murderers and Nazis, etc. How many people who thought the measures were excessive and this became public lost their jobs through denunciation, I don't know, but there were some who would have been better off staying in their positions.
How cynical the images of the dancing nurses on the deserted wards in the hospitals must have seemed to those who saw their parents, for example, criminally neglected, as in your case. That is very hard to bear, I would say, and you have my sympathy for that.
In my circle of acquaintances, those who clapped at the windows in the evenings were those who had isolated themselves the most and, out of fear, placed themselves in the hands of the state, which would "fix it". I followed, repulsed, the "hunters of justice" on their forays outside on the meadows and toboggan runs, where parents welcomed winter with their children unmasked. Their gloating over "caught violators" gave ample indication of how much they felt legitimised by the state to play the police. I saw masked policemen dressed in full gear, eight of them gathered around a homeless man and harassed him. In my city, entire parks were closed and entire streets were mandated with masks.
Did you follow the early witnesses from hospitals, like some of the nurses who cried over the treatment of the patients, in particular those, who were given ventilators and died from being ventilated way too heavily and even in no need for ventilation?
Oh well, I don't want to go into this again. You cannot undo what happened. You are right, we all need some space and to heal what wounds we have.
I don't think that "the next pandemic" shall even be declared.
I nearly missed this excellent message Eric, been fighting with my new cellphone, and then the wifi died, so much time wasted! But...I echo everything you say in your post. A couple of Pros but more Cons, it's as if the world or rather the people of the world have gone totally crazy! Some of the stuff that's happened to us seems quite unreal.
I will definitely respond with a #blockchainmemoryproject.
Have a good weekend Eric
Oh no! Technical problems are not fun! I've had some tech conundrums the past few days too. I've been trying to get that BlockchainMemoryProj (this is what it'll be named due to character limitations --- Maybe MemoryVault or Time Capsule might be better?) community created then discovered you need 3 Hive to do it now. You no longer get much Hive in post payouts so I bought some on Bittrex and was going to transfer them over to my Hive wallet and then Bittrex shut down the Hive wallets for maintenance. It looks like they'll be opening the wallet tomorrow so I'll be able to get it created, hopefully. Patience. : )
I'm glad you enjoyed this one and I can't wait to read yours! I'll post in a few days to announce the community once it's all created.
Enjoy your weekend and good luck getting your technical wrinkles ironed out!
Advice for the future?
The way is in training. You might not like it, someone may've put you off the taste, but freedom is discipline. There are as many sayings as there are people around this idea, but it's that momentum that's built off action. So to enter a state of flow, where you accomplish what you envision with great facility, you must do. Do it daily. Deliberately. There might even be a moment your eyebrows lift up, your head tilts, and the same scene has a different perspective.
Experiences are felt, but hard to explain. Share them. Your story might move another if only you tell it.
A couple things I didn't appreciate it til' now.
Great advice. Your comment reminds me a lot of Stoicism. The Stoic philosophy preaches the importance of making it a habit to become stronger, better, tougher, more temperate each day. I signed up for these emails a few months ago and they've helped me tremendously: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail
I too believe in the value of sharing experiences. I could cause a spark in someone that ignites real and lasting change.
Hello dear friend @ericvancewalton good day
It is true that it would have been good to have had previous experience to overcome this pandemic
My advice for those who are going through this unpleasant moment is to take it easy, not to despair, if you do, you make bad decisions.
Spend your free time in activities that make you feel good, having idle time makes you think, and it is not good to think too much in a critical situation
Take care of your health, eating healthy is a good way to do it
What a great idea to leave a message for future generations
I take this opportunity to wish you a splendid day
Hello my friend! Thank you and great advice on your part! Fear and despair will force people to make decisions out of desperation and that is rarely a good thing. Have a wonderful day!
Wow ... your writing is very inspiring. What you say is very true and very logical. The pandemic has almost destroyed the economy in my country. Many companies are laying off their employees. This of course leads to a high unemployment rate. .If the unemployment rate is high, it will have an impact on the high crime rate in society. You're right, we have to support local businesses so that the economy is stable. Have a nice day, Eric.
Thank you Eliana! I hope this message somehow survives and provides some value to those people going through something similar in the next century. Enjoy your weekend!
Buy toilet paper... Maybe by then they will be using the three shells thing. I'm just kidding. You did a really good job here. I think staying active as much as you can during the pandemic is a good one. If you aren't strictly confined to your homes get out and enjoy nature. My wife and I took walks pretty much every morning while we were working from home and it was really nice.
Yes! How in the world did I forget about toilet paper?! Maybe "buy stock in Charmin (P&G)" too. Lol. Bike rides and walks saved my sanity on several occasions.
That or streaming services since everyone will mostly be indoors!
I wonder what that will look like in 2120? Probably VR?
Holodecks or I'm not interested :)
We'd better have warp drive by then too or I'll be disappointed.
Totally with you on that one! Who knows, come 2120 they might all have nanites that fight infections and viruses will be a thing of the past. Or they will be robotic. Either way!
That 'blockchainmemoryproject' concept would make for an interesting Hive Community thingamajig.
Great idea! I created this tag before communities were a thing.
If you do it, be clear with guidelines/expectations. Wouldn't want 1000 people telling the future what they ate today. The actual concept; I envision a lot of deep thought and authenticity. Has the potential to trigger some very interesting material.
I've always pictured this blockchain as the stone tablet of the internet. Provided the power doesn't go out eventually leading to society melting all these devices and infrastructure into shiny trinkets of worship and swords, of course.
I'll definitely be doing this. Thanks for the idea. When creating this tag I had the same vision for this blockchain. I think some future generation of humanity (or AI) will scrub the web for all they can learn about us.
It's your idea. All I did was point at the toolbox.
When it comes to the future, I wouldn't mind sticking around. Upload my mind into this contraption. Then if those future people find these writings, they'll be able to chat with an expert. I'll be CAI. Conscious Artificial Intelligence. Of course we'll have to win the war of 2169 against the AI in order to reestablish our right to contact but that shouldn't be too hard. They were just jealous of our file sizes. It's so lame.
Not too late to make it one!
I find it so ironic that humanity has developed such powerful technology yet has no idea how to use it to improve the lives of billions of people. In fact, we seem to be intentionally destroying our planet. If this pandemic teaches us anything it should be how to live together in harmony and with respect for each other, not how to kill one another.
I think tech has grown so exponentially fast that it's outpaced our ability to integrate it into our lives/society properly. I hope we start to utilize it to its highest potential. We have all the tech we need right now to make this planet a paradise, if we could only get over the ego and the greed that it creates.
@nonameslefttouse is absolutely right, this would make an excellent community idea!
I've written a few posts talking about this very thing, addressing it to my "grands and greats", because I do believe the Blockchain will survive. In fact I have this in mind often when I post. How cool would it be if I could read the thoughts and experiences of my great great grandparents? I would pay for a subscription to do just that, and I have a feeling places like Facebook will monetize such things in the future.
Hopefully this doesn't post twice, I made the comment an hour ago but just realized when I reblogged it that it was sitting there unposted
It looks like it just posted once! I believe Hive will survive too. A decentralized blockchain is the most future-proof storage medium I can think of. It is a wonderful idea! I'll be getting this community created tomorrow. I tried a few minutes ago but I'm having an issue with HiveSigner at the moment. Oh, I would definitely pay to for access to this kind of information from my ancestors. To know them more intimately would mean understanding ourselves better.
As the world suffers from any pandemic, so will the future. Of course, trying to grow your own food can save you from some economic crises. I will tell the future generation to be aware and take measures to deal with the situation. To avoid the mistakes that have been made in the past. Thanks to cryptocurrency, it was useful to people during the pandemic
Excellent idea that we can create a community that will serve to gather information for posterity. I am really worried about that "crystal" generation that is emerging because I don't know if they have the adaptability that generation X has. These days I was listening to a girl who said that she was extremely bothered by demonstrations of affection and I wondered if she would know the importance of a hug, a kiss, for the physical, mental and emotional development of the human being. That is why we should appreciate the little things, from the air we breathe to the kiss we give to our loved ones. Maybe in the not so distant future, young people will not believe that we touched each other to show our feelings, that people hugged and kissed to greet each other. But yes: people did that and it was nice. Big hugs to you, @ericvancewalton. I loved this work and I think I will talk about it with my friends.
Thank you! I sometimes worry about the fragility of the younger generations too. I notice some have a very difficult time with rejection or hearing the word "no" in a professional setting. As you said too, some of them have grown up using digital devices and haven't had as much human contact and affection. That really makes a huge difference in what kind of person you grow up to be. Being able to handle rejection, not feeling utterly defeated when you hear the word "no", and the ability to communicate and connect on a human level are all such important components of success. Thanks again, Nancy! I should have the community created within the next few days. I hope you have a wonderful weekend my friend!
Likewise, Eric. I know it will be an excellent community if it has as moderators prepared and sensitive people like you. From the little I know about you, I know that you will succeed in this new project. My support to you
Its a good read and I really with the pandemic won't happen by then.
These advice is even more helping to us present here in 2022. I'm currently trying to always stay in the present and live a fulfilled life.
Thanks for sharing this to our future generation. Hive is a gem that can help human in preserving history and improve human existence.
I hope it doesn't happen again either. Thanks for the kind comment!
Take care of yourself! I have an updated gym and equipment to get through the winters, biked in the spring/summer/fall, and walked a lot. I also worked a lot, a real lot, so I needed to care for myself. Interestingly enough, I was thinking the same thing about friends, I lost a few, and gained a few, but, mostly stayed pretty stable. But, my kids took a real hit. People got closer to their families and ditched their friends. That is pretty cool. We sort of needed that.
Keep in touch with the family, especially if you live away. My sisters and brothers finally learned to zoom! How lazy are they? But, we have continued and I love it.
Find ways to relax. Meditate. Exercise. Pamper yourself. Get proper sleep.
Stress less. It really helps.
All great advice! Exercise played a huge role in keep me sane. We live in a multi-story condo building and I climbed for twenty minutes, two times every day during the winter and cycled when it was warm enough. Unfortunately we've lost number of few friends (or maybe they're still uneasy about socializing?). It seems like people get stressed about making plans or commitments to get together, I'm hoping this comes to an end.
These are great. The whole idea is actually. For me the one that resonates most was taking advantage of the pause. We talk about how much we have lost and suffered under the various lockdowns but at the same time my family rediscovered our love of the outdoors and nature and to this day still have managed to stay out of the weekend rear race and just do what we love
Thank you! Yeah, that pause aspect was one of the best things that happened aside from families getting closer. It actually gave people time to be with their thoughts and take action. It's funny, here in the US, the media keeps talking about all these open jobs (often restaurant service and/or entry level) and how people aren't willing to work. In actuality people who used to fill these positions used the pandemic years to get retrained in better careers or become entrepreneurs because they grew tired of barely scraping by. Good for your family! I'm glad you rediscovered nature. The more exposure and the greater connection young people can with to nature, the better IMHO.
One message to future generations from me, save the earth and try to make your world better to live in abundant and peace.
I hope and pray that happens.
Well said. For those passing through the current pandemic, be strong and have it in mind it will not last forever. You will overcome it.
Good luck to the future generations
The ability to see the hope in the light at the end of the tunnel can give you great strength.
Thank you for share this if we have more information about covid 19 everything was be better. Nice post and I hope everyone in hive can read this!
Best wishes and best energy 🌸💖
Thanks!
covid made our life slow.
What version of the PlayStation will they be playing? Hopefully Microsoft no longer exists.
Hello friends, greetings from me, may goodness always be with you, yes I totally agree with what you have said, but I really hope that the COVID-19 pandemic will not repeat itself in the future,
And I hope your message can be read in the future,What is certain is that you and I cannot predict what will happen a century later after the present, of course we wish the best for our children and grandchildren in the future,greetings from the village children Who lives at the tip of Sumatra, Indonesia😀