The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 is something we'll remember for many years.  For all of the anxiety, fear, disease, and disruption of life that a pandemic brings, it also provides the opportunity for sober reflection.  In turn, sober reflection often leads to increased wisdom and a reset of priorities.

For example, we've learned through this pandemic that there really isn't a great need for entertainers, professional athletes, or so-called celebrities of any kind.  The Beautiful People whom we so handsomely reward for being, well, not much more than beautiful people haven't been of much use now that the chips are down. 

We've learned that the truly important people — the true heroes — are farmers, ranchers, truck-drivers, medical personnel, first responders, and all the other unfortunately anonymous people who trudge off to work each day and devote their lives to the critical tasks of keeping civilization afloat.  Does anyone know the names of those who keep clean culinary water flowing to our taps?  What about garbage-collectors or those who man our sewage facilities?  Do all these people seem just a little more vitally important now?

Great parents who are now schooling their children at home are some of our true heroes.  Military reserve personnel who have been called up to active duty and are leaving home and family to deal with this pandemic are true heroes.  Front-line health care workers who place themselves in the midst of potential risk and danger — often with inadequate protection and supplies — are true heroes.  And those who man the Thin Blue Line in unsettled times are also true heroes.  Finally, those who simply and quietly go about doing good and serving others in their neighborhoods and families are true heroes.

Meanwhile, doesn't it seem — in times of crisis wherein we now find ourselves — that celebrities, who are accustomed to lecturing and hectoring us on how we should live our lives, should just quietly sit down and keep their mouths shut?  Aren't we realizing, now more than ever, that all they provide is idle entertainment, for which trivial service they are compensated with vast sums of money?  Somehow, without the NBA, life continues!  Somehow, without concerts and movies, civilization survives!

This trying time will eventually pass.  Even when it does, shouldn't we have cultivated a great deal more respect and appreciation for the real heroes of our society?  And shouldn't we end up with a great deal less fawning devotion for those who do little more than to simply entertain us?  We can even hope that our celebrities have themselves developed a little more self-awareness and humility through all of this.  ...Nah, who am I kidding? 

But the rest of us — the true heroes — should quietly and confidently continue to shoulder our burden of being the true pillars of society, giving each other a knowing nod of appreciation now and then, while paying much less attention to the rantings and gibberish of those who merely play games — or play make-believe in front of a camera — as their modest contribution to civilization.