There is a story I once heard but haven’t been able to track down the origin and it goes:
The first time that man saw a camel, he was terrified.
By the second day, he was curious
and on the third day, he carried a harness in his hand.
I hope my paraphrasing is right and it sounds like it could be a religious quote or maybe something from the jungle book but whoever said it, I can relate to it with my own personal experiences.
The only time I had ever seen a wild boar before was in Poland while travelling by train with my friend Mateusz Musialski. We were travelling through a forest in a remote area and I saw the mystical creature through the window and I say mystical because I never saw one of them on a farm in Ireland.
STICK TO THE PATH:
Years later I moved to Madrid and found myself living very close to a family of wild boar. They would come right up to your door or garden at night and residents complained about the animals drinking from their swimming pools though I had never seen them.
One night when I was living in this beautiful suburb outside of Madrid, I came across a hog and it scared me. This thing was enormous and terrifying and it looked to be the size of a pony or horse.
I think, the size of the beast probably had something to do with it standing on a mound of soil or high elevation or something but it looked like an absolute beast.
Maybe the legend of the R.O.U.S. is true and rodents of unusual size exist but this thing was terrifying to me.
What kind of prehistoric creature has fangs like that?
KEEP MOVING:
The next time, I came across such a beast, it was dark, just like before but I was on my bike.
The bicycle gave me much more height than before and I was happier outrunning the creature with my trusty Trek 8000 underneath me than I was walking on a footpath like the last time.
The creature didn’t look as tall as before and the wild pig didn’t scare me anymore.
Fool me once, shame on you but I wasn’t going to be fooled a second time certainly not when I had the higher ground and could outrun the beast.
I looked at the animal and the animal looked at me, standing tall on my bicycle and we both practiced some social distancing.
HARNESS WHAT WE’VE GOT:
It is ok to be scared, it is ok to be worried and worried for the lives of your loved ones. It is ok to be angry about jobs and the economy and it is okay to say, that monster is terrifying.
But after 4 months it is time, to get on your bike and finally take the higher ground and say,
you aren’t so tough Covid-19.
We need people better equipped to fight this disease and that means research and understanding which isn’t easy when hospitals are full of patients and staff are lacking the equipment they need.
Harnessing our understanding of Covid-19 isn’t going to be easy as some world leaders continue to peddle bad advice rather than rallying behind science and medicine.
We have to harness what we got and I have to give a shout out to my friend Mateusz Musialski who is an E.M.T. in the Midlands who I met while doing a Lifeguarding course in Athlone.
Be brave, confront this beast but keep a safe distance and we will master Covid-19 like man did in the parable about the terrifying camel and like we did with The Plague, The Famine, and Spanish Flu too.
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