With his special relativity, Einstein taught us that motion is relative. As long as you don’t change direction or speed, you feel like you’re standing still. So much so that if, for example, two spaceships cross, each of them will have the impression that the other is in motion. Without another point of reference, it is impossible to know, from each person’s point of view, which one is true.
When I read the news or just look around, I feel like everything is tumbling down at high speed. The Quebec system seems to be collapsing, hospitals, schools and services for people in distress are less and less able to meet demand. The middle class is drowning in debt for the benefit of the richest while the poorest, the toothless ghettoize, armed to the… Culture is engulfed in an English of 88 words which is only used to order a coffee at Tim Hortons or an iPhone from Amazon. Infrastructure is deteriorating at an unmanageable rate. While bike lanes are being built in the midst of hundreds of thousands of cars, the environment lengthens summer until November.
Political movements are polarizing towards the two extremes, religious beliefs sit at the top of our charters and are radicalized. Rationalism, which made our fortune, is rapidly breaking down.
I sometimes have the impression that the confinement of 2020, with its deaths of hunger and thirst in deserted hospices, its silent schools, its masks and its distancing, its curfews and its forced closures, was only ‘a dress rehearsal for what awaits us. Next time it won’t be a virus, it will be real life, without PKU.
Tipping point
It is difficult to predict when exactly we will reach this tipping point when we are in the movement, without a benchmark. This is why I decided a few years ago to leave the ship, well before the scheduled time, and to find myself a quiet corner, a lifeboat of sorts, from which to observe the fall. I have settled the debts, reduced the lifestyle and stocked up on good wine. Of course, my canoe will also be dragged into the movement, but hopefully only a few years later. Years when you would have wanted me to work, 60 hours a week, as if nothing had happened, as if the system was going to hold up, as if I was not going to die before I could enjoy what he still has to offer.
I have the impression that thousands of nurses, attendants, teachers and educators are making the same choice. The majority of women, those who have always represented the best hope for humanity and who are resigning en masse. They say thank you for your bonuses, Mr. Legault, but no thank you.
As far as I’m concerned, when my time comes, I’m going to die standing, in several years I hope, glass in hand and, in the other, that of my sweetheart. No hospitals or hospice for me, just maybe TV again, to see the tipping point live, a final comfort of not leaving anything worthwhile.
What do you think? Express your opinion