Revived

May 05, 2021

I had mentioned that while most of my plants survived the hard freeze we had two weeks ago, one of the peppers did not appear to make it.  Not only did all the leaves turn brown and fall off, so did the branches, leaving only a stub of a stem.  It took several days of procrastination before I finally bought another plant.  I believed the dead plant to be a tomato plant so that was what I bought.  I left the new plant inside since we have had severe storms and tornado warning the last days.  The last thing I wanted was to put the plant in the container and have it wiped out by a hailstorm.  When I went out to plant the tomato yesterday, I found two things.  One, the plant that froze was a pepper and not a tomato.  Two, the stem now had leaves beginning to grow off the end of the stub.  It seems to have revived.

I came across an article online that addressed how the American economy could be revived.  It had three points that need to be taken into consideration, and all revolve around learning from crises we have overcome in the past.  Successful government responses to previous crises have worked when they first prioritize people.  We need to focus on human welfare and human capital.  Second, a crisis tends to accelerate preexisting economic trends, and government responses are effective when they take that into account and plan long-term policy accordingly.  Third, the most effective planning for long-term economic recovery starts early, often alongside acute crisis-relief efforts.  We denied the crisis existed and then delayed any response and missed the early intervention window.  I guess that means plan B.

One of the problems faced during a crisis is the pressure on policy makers to focus on the short term rather than long term solutions that could create real change.  A long-term solution would be to begin to build and expand public and private sector innovation through education, research and development grants, and providing publicly available data.  This also means taking steps to facilitate transition to the post-pandemic economy by investing in programs that including job matching and reskilling that would be crucial for building the workforce of the future.  As always, for our economy to be revived it will rely on a combination of past action and present response based on the result of those actions.     

Thoughts:  When I looked up “revived” in the online Free Dictionary it stated this was a variant of the word “re·vive (rĭ-vīv′)”.  As most know, revived means “to bring back to life or consciousness, or to resuscitate.”  It can also mean “to restore” or “to return to use” or “to regain health, vigor, or good spirits.”  Certainly, that is what happened to my pepper plant.  We are told this is also what is needed for our economy.  Several types of service and industry jobs will likely never return.  This is an opportunity to retrain and retool for a new workforce.  The old ways do not be revived.  What they need is to be transformed.  Do the work.  Follow the science.  Change is coming and it starts with you.