Your Coronavirus Song of the Day. Sixteen
Statistically speaking, your odds of catching the corona-virus are slim. Your odds of developing a severe case are smaller still. And your odds of dying from the disease are microscopic.
Statistically speaking.
Two million confirmed cases vs. a world population of eight billion – that’s a pretty small percentage.
But it feels different, doesn’t it? It feels more like the unstoppable superflu from Stephen King’s The Stand. We read stories everyday of overcrowded hospitals and overworked medical staff and thousands of deaths each day. The media brings these facts to our attention, and rightfully so. That is the job of the media.
These stories wrench us emotionally and drive those analytical statistics right out the window. Indeed, it is a bit of a balancing act to temper this real-life emotional drama and pathos with cold, hard data with its graphs and projections.
The stories that grab us the hardest are the individual stories. The young mother who says goodbye to her kids via walkie-talkie. The married couple of 51 years who died six minutes apart. Perfectly healthy young adults that succumb to the virus. Statistically, these are outliers. Anomalies. Off the chart blips.
But these are what we focus on. Because we are human; we have hearts that can be broken; and we have imaginations the wonder if that could be us.
We project ourselves into those stories.
What if that were my family?
What would that feel like?
Would I be able to endure the pain and suffering?
Statistically speaking, we shouldn’t let ourselves go there. Humanly speaking, we can’t help it.
Here’s a song that goes there in a very real, gut-wrenching, yet beautiful way.
“What Sarah Said” by Death Cab For Cutie, from their 2005 album, Plans.
Listen. Enjoy. Stay well.
Bonus Track.
I wanted to try to tie this song to the theme of my post on Regina Spektor’s “Laughing With.” Namely that we are not in control, but it seemed a mere afterthought. So a footnote seemed appropriate. But consider the first line:
“And it came to me then that evey plan is a tiny prayer to father time.”
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