How adaptable are we?

Today we turned our clocks back for daylight savings time. Turning our clocks back much like Covid is giving us more to sleep in this morning or an extra hour today to accomplish projects. For those un familiar with daylight savings time here in the U.S.A. it is adjusting the clocks for more daylight during the typical work day time period. Daylight saving time dates back to World War II as an effort to save power and so resources to be used in the war effort.

I watch in town and the news and I see change. Covid has presented us as a species with many new habits. I live in Fargo, North Dakota U.S.A.

Recently many people, a growing amount actually, have been wearing masks. The masks hide faces and yet I see more and more people recognizing someone that they know. This would not be surprising but as time progresses with less socialization features should be blurring into a growing pool of oblivion. Before Covid and masks almost everyone would say they could not recognize someone without seeing their face. Now after months of semi isolation people are being recognized by body language, hair styles, ear shapes, glasses and clothes styles alone. I believe this is because the need for socialization has awakened part of our dormant brain areas. I see this in larger areas including the changing of priorities.

This is a college town and for more than one year unfortunately I saw it ranked as the drunkest city in the country. I am not impressed by a ranking like this. We are entering another stretch of more limited bar and restaurant seating capacities. Several months ago, the bars and restaurants opened up slowly to about 50% capacity. I did not see the patrons come back. We have had many businesses close permanently in the hospitality and retail sectors because of the pandemic. Why did they not fill to their capacity limits when they reopened? At 50% I do not believe they are long term viable businesses. The business viability is not what I am presenting here however. Why did the people that ignored family, other friends, and hobbies not come back to what they did not miss in a week when presented the opportunity?

Let us look at what was a society focused activity, at least here in Fargo, sports. We have finely reached a point that NDSU football does not control the town on Saturdays in the fall. Even in the bars the seats are not full for T.V. sports. I see a dwindling amount of comments on something that was considered a necessity for decades. I believe that people are adapting in mostly positive was to the new old priorities of family and close meaningful friends. The friends that you can count on to have time for you when you need it. Yes, unfortunately, I am seeing the articles that show stress in the community. I will list some of these so hopefully awareness may help someone through intervention. The negative things that are showing here in the news are: increased large scale drug traffic, mental illness, domestic violence and suicide. Please if you see signs of any of these try to get professional help for those in need. Here our services are becoming maxed out. These changes do not however seem to be large enough to surpass the basic change in local humanity.

Where will the adaptability grow to?

Will we now be able to overcome the hurdles to addressing conservation, global warming, mental illness, personal development, leadership or community to name a few as a positive result of Covid?

Please share your local observations thoughts questions.