And the people with too much time on their hands wrote bullshit poetry...

So you know this poem, I assume.

"And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.

And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.

And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed."

I first saw it during the week of March 16, the first week of the stay-at-home order in Maryland. At that time, the person who shared it attributed it to an anonymous poet, writing during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. I was skeptical even without reading past the first line (because there was no way that I was going to read more than one line of a poem that opens with the words “And the people.”) But people kept sharing it, kept commenting on the uncanny relevance of this poem from over a century ago, and my curiosity got the better of me.

And so I finally read it. And I called bullshit. And then I consulted Snopes and it turns out that I was right.

What gave it away? Well, “made art” was the first hint. People didn’t say that 100 years ago. “New ways of being” was another hint, as was the reference to exercise. But the earth-healing was the biggest giveaway. I think that people in 1918 valued human life a little bit more than we do now, and they wouldn’t have celebrated a deadly disease outbreak because carbon emissions are down a bit.

I don’t blame the author for the 1918 story. I blame her only for writing this drivel. Many of us have been lucky enough to have a comparatively pleasant time at home for most of this, though we’d much prefer to have our normal lives back. Many more people, though, have suffered terribly--are still suffering terribly. I’m not mad at anyone who is enjoying the quarantine. I just think that they should have the kindness and the common sense to keep that to themselves. That way, when the danger passes and we all join together again, no one will have to smack them.

Time for me to go meet my shadow. I'm not fit company for anyone else right now.