ROTHENBURGER – Cabin fever is turning ‘calm and kind’ into snarky and jealous
(Image: Miroslava Chrienova, Pixabay)
CABIN FEVER HAS SET IN as we sit chafing at home this long weekend and it’s yielding some unattractive results.
Despite all the friendly, kind and caring advice to each other in earlier weeks on how to put our isolation time to good use, we’ve now entered a phase of snarkiness and jealousy.
The problem is that it’s arrived so early in the process. We’ve only been battling COVID-19 for a couple of months in our part of the world, and we have, at the least, several more months to go before we can let up.
The definition of cabin fever is irritability, restlessness and other such symptoms caused by long confinement. It’s a mental health condition. We can either give in to it or we can fight it.
A lot of folks are crying “Uncle” and letting their baser instincts take over.
Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and newspaper editor. He writes five commentaries a week for CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
The little virus, without a mind of its own brought the human side of the equation to its knees…will our leaders take a moment to reflect and perhaps come to the conclusion that the nature side of the equation needs a bit more paying attention to? Cabin time is reflective time after all!
Maybe the Jays will be playing the Phillies in the world series and maybe our hero, Joe Carter, will smack the winning home run over the wall in left field.
If I have to choose between what kind of behaviour you described, Mel, or watching a couple of reruns of my favourite baseball team, you can guess what my decision is going to be.