Four Years Later: A Reflection on How the Pandemic Changed New Yorkers

I don't know about you, but there's a weird disconnect in my brain that won't let me believe that it has been four years since the world went completely end up, but at the same time, it kind of feels like everything imploded just yesterday.

2020 was a wild ride. New York stepped into a real-life version of Jumanji with all the craziness happening around us. From the pandemic to murder hornets to virus stealing monkeys, and toilet paper shortages – we were stuck in a twisted game that we couldn't escape.

If the pandemic and murder hornets and virus stealing monkeys weren't enough, the cicadas decided to make their grand entrance after spending the last 17 years underground.

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We all thought that once someone got a handle on the pandemic that life would go back to normal. Boy, were we wrong! Two week to flatten the curve, my big toe. Life took a strange turn, and here we are, four years later, still dealing with different but equally unfathomable levels of craziness.

We've been through it all – especially the awful phrase "we're all in this together."We are so sick of still hearing it that we wish we could throw daggers at it to just make it go away. Someone, please, make it STOP!

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Over the last four years, we've wondered what could possibly come next only to realize that our wondering opened Pandora's box, and now, the hinge is broken and we have no way to shut the box.

If you've seen the movie Final Destination, you know the iconic (and very disturbing) horror scene in which there is a massive pileup as a truck hauling logs spills its load. For many of us, the last four years have made us feel like we've been dodging logs that are trying to take us out.

But at least we have toilet paper now.

I know this is probably going to get me some grief, but there are some things that I miss from the height of the pandemic.

I miss work not being so...work-ish. We did our jobs and we went home and we spent time with our families. Then, companies realized that they could make us download software that would put them literally in the palm of our hands and they used that to justify making us all engage in a nauseating number of virtual meetings which unfortunately is something that has not decreased in number four years later.

I miss having time. When we weren't able to cram our schedules as full as they are now, we had time. Time to read a book. Time to play a board game. Time to do repairs to our homes and plant gardens and go for walks. Then, everything opened back up and boom – here we are – back to chaos. I hate it.

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I miss daily family check ins. Have you ever noticed that when you can't have something is when you crave it the most? Many of us weren't able to travel to see family or visit them in their nursing homes. So, we picked up the phone and we called our loved ones every day to see how they were holding up. And we were able to do that because we didn't have all the virtual meetings and work demands that we do now.

I miss the kindness. Outside of people being obnoxious about hoarding toilet paper and disagreeing about whether or not the pandemic was a plan-demic, I feel like was a softness to people and a tender compassion that hadn't been there before and certainly isn't there now.

I was snuggling with my little boy who loves history and we got to talking about how he has lived through a monumental global historical event. The pandemic and years surrounding will be included in school textbooks. My hope is that my son and his entire generation won't just read the words in the history books but they will think back on their childhood, do their research, and learn a valuable lesson from the missteps of the adults in their lives and that they won't allow history to repeat itself.