McKinsey warns us to get set for "the new normal" and Seth has christened "GENC". Both signal a new way of life, different in ways as yet unimagined to how we all lived at New Year 2020.
​
They're both right - the future will be fundamentally different in both the roles of the agents of the state and capitalism and in the attitudes and expectations of individuals.

Schools and jobs will be changed forever. Large population centres (cities) might be changed forever - to become more decentralised.  

Australia has a shortage of Covid-19 testing kits, so the criteria to qualify for a test are strict.

If you present at your doctor and don't meet the criteria you are told to just go home and self-isolate.

This July I will be 72 years old, so I am on the wrong end of the mortality rate spectrum for this pandemic.
​
I've had flu-like symptoms for eight days (today's Saturday, March 21) but don't qualify for a test.

The thought of being confused and going backwards scares people.

Today, people seek help when this happens to them. In the not too recent past, we called it life.

​The way to move forward is to, firstly, acknowledge that life does not always make sense. 

Twitter, every "10 things you must do to feel happy"-list, and every "freedom lifestyle" course includes this one common admonition:

Drop the negative people in your life!

Fine, if you can do it; and excellent, if the cause is not within you. 

The advice is simplistic. Life is just a bit more complicated.

Most of us have to live with others who we would not put on our Happy List. What we really need to know is how to resist being sucked into the black holes of others. 

What I knew about my eldest brother (Harry) was relatively little. Only that he'd had a brutal upbringing - at the hands of  both our mother and our father. He'd learnt to box at an early age at the Botany Boys Club and this catalyzed in him an intensely deep-seated sense of manhood.

He went on to ride motorbikes before he had a license, knocked out two of my father's front teeth in one of their confrontations, and had been stabbed in the back by a large kitchen knife thrown at him by my mother as he ran from her rage.

He left home before I was born, was in trouble with the law, spent time in Pentridge Prison. and had fled to work in New Britain (Papua New Guinea) for 15 years in about 1960 (shortly after Mum died - after spending time in a psychiatric institution).

I knew that Harry had been living in Darwin for decades - 3,200km from me in Melbourne as the crow flies and 40 hours by road. When my phone rang 4 weeks ago with a caller id of "Darwin" I wondered what was coming.