Another Fox

Everyone has a story about a fox.

People watch our cunning friends taking food from overflowing bins late at night, or at the purple early dawn.  Always alone, they wander the streets of Dublin, and are less and less afraid of people.  Sometimes they find their way into gardens through openings in fences, and if they discover a garden is derelict, they stay a while.  A vixen might decide to build a den and raise her cubs under the decking or near the shed, and they are used to the noises of the traffic and the smells of city life.

Are you sitting comfortably? 

Then I will tell you more about why the urban foxes are thriving. 

No, seriously.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Many of you have returned to your offices lately, and I worry that you are not sitting well.  Sitting on any object for seven to nine hours per day in an office, is not what evolution prepared us for, but particularly if you are also sitting in a moving vehicle too.  I see a lot of ergonomic stools on my social media newsfeeds, which means that some of you have been buying chairs that you think will save your souls.

They won’t.

Ergonomic stools will not save your souls.

There are just two types of people in this world: those who want to return to the office, and the rest of us.

I still don’t understand why anyone would want to get up early, force feed themselves breakfast, lunge into traffic so that they can sit in an open plan silent office, where they can work on a machine that is similar to one they have at home.  It makes no sense and if offices weren’t situated in privately owned buildings, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.  We should be using the office buildings for accommodation, and more interesting activities: such as, underwater wrestling, entomology classes and witchcraft.

According to the Irish government, the pandemic will officially end on 22 October, however, they didn’t say if it would be before or after lunch. I am looking forward to going back to precedented times.  However, I would like to keep many of the restrictions, including everyone keeping their distance from me, washing hands, wearing masks and of course, working from home (if able).  It just makes good sense and might ease our winter fuel worries brought on by the lack of HGV drivers in Britain, and Russian foreign policy.

Imagine a winter without Netflix! 

Good god in heaven!  Imagine us all sitting in our candle lit homes, with small tins of peas, and only our memories of the first time we watched Schitt’s Creek.

I hope it’s all nearly over.

I made the mistake of reading that article in the Economist last week about the excess deaths, since the pandemic began.  They collected the global death data and took away the official Covid deaths and those deaths which occurred because hospitals were caring for Covid patients.  Then they added the deaths that didn’t happen, such as from seasonal flu, pollution, and road traffic accidents.  They reached a surreal total of somewhere between thirteen and eighteen million excess deaths, since the beginning of this reality horror show.

Those are some numbers.

I shouldn’t have read the article.

I shouldn’t have read the article while the seasons are changing because I’ve believed for some time, that a changing season can upset some of us.  It’s during the changing seasons that we have to admit that life is constantly altering and evolving, and that everything is forever temporary.  This makes us uncomfortable, because we like to believe that we are immortal and fully protected.  We are not.  We are just floating around this galaxy for an infinitesimal period of time, and less than speckles of dust, in the eternal book of life. 

If this makes us nervous, it shouldn’t. 

It should bring us joy.

It should bring us joy because nothing much matters.

What I mean by that, is that none of the absurd foolishness matters.  That argument with a family member, an awkward email from work, a strange sensation after too much social media.  None of it matters at all.  As long as we’re kind to one another and decent, and can show love and human compassion, that’s all that counts.  None of the silliness matters when placed within our concepts of time and space.  Isn’t it wonderful to feel so light and floaty, when we truly accept our insignificance and lack of importance?

So, with that in mind, enjoy the new fox painting on a wall of a building in Dublin, that I used to illustrate this week’s blog.  The story lives on as long as we laugh, love and have more tales to tell.  These things are only important:  love, compassion, kindness, repeat.  Until the time when our parts of this tale end, nothing else matters at all.