Richard CapogrossoApr 1·3 min read
The world is watching carefully to see how these two emerge from the pandemic.
What is that dark streak of human nature that tingles and illuminates internally when heroes fall? As an example of this, I give you the love/hate relationship surrounding the United Kingdom and the United States. Not between each other. I mean, there was that unpleasantness back in 1776, but I think it’s safe to say we’ve all gotten over that.
No, what I am referring to is that most everyone, on some level, is enamored by England and America, or at the very least, awed by them at times, and this feeling exists most acutely in London and New York. No two cities symbolize more fully the promise of…everything, everything that this grand experiment called humanity has to offer. Each city fuels an occupant’s appetites and ambitions like no two in the world. Any career path you would want to pursue can be found there. Every cuisine, form of entertainment and vice you desire are at your fingertips. Admittedly, there are other cities where one can find these things, but no two cities spark such infinite adoration by tout le monde.
Yet, with love, there is often envy. And when someone is envious of you, they rejoice in your downfall. Which is why, in the early days of the pandemic, and intermittently since, there were some, many, who knows the actual number, but enough who, while maybe not publicly expressing glee, silently sniggered as those two cities were brought to their knees by a microscopic parasite with a spiky crown.
Suddenly, everything that was available became seeds of a deathtrap. Restaurants, bars, theatres, sporting events, public transport, offices, shared living spaces, had to either be shut down or reevaluated as to how they would be managed going forward, possibly forever. It wasn’t so much a realization of how precarious life is. We all understand too well that random unseen bus, bar of soap or act of violence which could snuff us out in an instant. It was more the proverbial bucket of water that doused us into the new reality that our way of life is something that can be upended, altered or taken away in so short a time.
Nowhere was this more apparent than London and New York. These two capitals of commerce and conviviality were transformed into citadels of a pestilence that seemed to be growing exponentially and unchecked with each passing day. A foreboding pall was descending and the message it carried was that this might be the death of the city. While this fate was mirrored in metropolises across the globe, it looked particularly bad in London and New York, and that seemed… incomprehensible!
Still, gleeful chortles of derision could be heard in the ether, surrounding those two cities like a nimbus of scorn. How glad they all were to see those haughty burgs knocked down a few pegs.
Recently however, an equally curious aspect of the human psyche has emerged as the top dogs have become the underdogs. People have started rooting for them. London and New York are coming back! It will be slow, in fits and starts, and continue to be painful. But it will happen. It may never be quite the same for those two cities, but how they resurface into the new human existence that is emerging post-Covid will set the tone for the rest. Which is why they have to get it right. The world is watching.
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