Just Surviving - Existential Angst

Up to now I have remained as positive as possible. I've tried to stay reliably well informed & complied with the quickly changing rules. I don't want to get Covid 19 or give it to anyone else. I take the pandemic very seriously, while not being unduly anxious about getting it. I can't see it or feel it, but I know it's there & it's killing people & leaving others with long term health problems. The human cost is high.

10 months on from originally shielding for 3 months I am a different person.

I have become conditioned to a completely different way of living. I don't go out of the house much. Maybe a weekly local food shop, a walk with my daughters dog in fields by the river Cherwell, a rare trip to a big supermarket. I do have a lot of contact with friends & family but mostly via technology - texts, emails, phone calls... Sometimes I have conversations on my doorstop socially distanced. I have Zoomed & had Webinars with several charities during 2020, so am very well informed on Climate Change & have become a regular lobbyist. But my days are generally the same routine - Alone but not lonely & relatively boring.

Now I am concerned that I have become too used to a much more solitary & sedentary life than hitherto. The reality of my world has simultaneously contracted to my home & widened due to modern communications. I wonder if I am just surviving? I also wonder whether I have any more right to exist than anyone else? Do I deserve to be kept alive?

The vaccine is here. We all hope that it will get us out of this dreadful situation. Personally I think that Covid is endemic, like Flu. I also think that it's only a matter of time until there is another pandemic. We humans have created the conditions which makes that inevitable. 

Should I at almost 76, with underlying health conditions, be any more worthy of life than anyone else? Should I be prioritised? How do we decide what one life is worth? Any such decision is flawed. Maybe it should be random, decided by a computer - Heads you win, tails you loose.

I don't know. I don't want to die, but I am dying. We all are from the moment we are born. Dying is natural. I am towards the normal end of my life. Just because I can be preserved by science, does that make it right? Shouldn't "quality of life" & the contribution an individual can make to society be factors in the choice?

So I have existential angst. Should I decline the vaccine so it can be given to someone younger, someone whose skills society needs at the moment? Or simply someone who has their life ahead of them?

It's a dilemma.