Even if you’ve had a ‘good’ pandemic there are no winners to this season of our lives. The losses are great and we are all grieving someone or something that was an important and integral part of our lives.
I worry that those who have been relatively unscathed by the economic fallout of the pandemic economy feel they cannot express how they feel, and I worry that that those who have been profoundly impacted, but not economically, by the pandemic also cannot express how they feel. What do we do about this?
We can all understand the grief connected with a loved one passing, I am not sure we can all understand the feelings of grief and loss for many people goes beyond people, we can feel the loss of our careers, our homes, our freedoms and capacity to explore. I was listening to an interview with Michaela Coel 'last week and she talks about the loss and ‘post-writum depression' she is experiencing after writing and the success of “I May Destroy You.” Loss seeps into so many parts of our lives and maybe we need to think about this a bit more and have a bit more compassion for the feelings that come with it.
Personally I think it’s OK to mourn the small things that make living in a community so big, the smiles of strangers and seeing children playing out in the street. I think it’s OK to grieve for the unexpected friendly exchange with a stranger in a supermarket queue, just as we we can absolutely miss with an abundance all the ordinary moments of our lives.
I am also worried people who feel optimistic about the future and imagine there is hope at the end of this rainbow currently feel they have to be silent. While there are losses and new stresses many of us have not experienced before I also think this chapter has given us the gift of stillness, together with the capacity and space in the silence for conversations about equity and equality.
The mood is rightly somber, but it feels like for many people, there is no space for joy in these times and that anyone having fun will be frowned upon. I think there should always be space for hope and joy, even in the most terrible times people have always found joy and happiness. The capacity to think beyond the immediate situation with enthusiasm is one of the things that’s makes us humans great. We don’t need to be wedded only to this time, we can imagine beyond today and last week and last month and last February, we know this is a chapter, not our life’s only story.
I absolutely believe this time is creating the space for opportunity and breaking old habits and systems that only exist because that’s they way the establishment built them. I wonder if in the stillness of this pandemic we can use the space to re-imagine life (in the UK) and create opportunities for people to try new big things like new housing models so that everyone can have the security of home? Maybe this pandemic will show those that control the nations purse strings that all our children need outdoor space play and this is not a luxury that should only be afforded by the rich? Maybe we will learn our healthcare workers and our delivery drivers are heroes all the time and pay them appropriately?
In the big thinking maybe we can also think small and learn to talk about and acknowledge that loss shows up in many ways and that people are grieving and that they might need to be heard without feeling like they are being insensitive and without the side bar of my pandemic being worse than your pandemic. There are no winners to this season, the losses are great and we are all grieving someone or something that was an important and integral part of our lives.