Boston is creeping back to life. College students travel in packs. Traffic congeals in all the familiar places like crocuses pushing out along the Charles. The wealthy are moving back from their other houses and want the remodeling of their city home finished. The vaccinated flourish, stealthy and secure, singing It’s a new dawn / It’s a new day / It’s a new life for me / And I’m feeling good. ¹

But …

It’s been said that we must not fall back to the old normal because it wasn’t working for so many of us, that we lived in a world without meaning. Now, orbited by conspiracy theories and disinformation, reality and the world seem far more fragile. It doesn’t need to be that way.

“The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently.” – David Graeber

¹ Feelin’ Good, written by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse.