In Shakespeare’s play called Hamlet, the main character states: “To be or not to be? That is the question…”. As we enter our third year of living and adapting to COVID-19, I wonder if “to mask or not to mask?” is still the question.
Every day, we are confronted with large and small choices related to the pandemic. For example, do I choose to still live conservatively given the presence of COVID? Or do I go about my daily living as if the whole thing has passed? There is no one right answer as the parameters and choices in each situation are constantly changing. What we understand today may change based on new information that surfaces tomorrow.
At the Spring 2022 From Vision to Action Executive Roundtable, I shared that we were experiencing a combination of two things in society and in the work place. The first is pandemic related grief, and the second is pandemic related anxiety. With the former, people are experiencing a wide range of feelings including helplessness, depression, fear, fatalism, and resignation. The impact of COVID just never really goes away.
At work, the Great Resignation continues. Furthermore, the difficulty of finding and hiring new people also continues. The overall outcome is that many people are focused on their losses, and on their problems more than their short term wins or successes.
When it comes to pandemic related anxiety, we continue to focus on the escalating feeling of loosing control and things just not being “back to normal” yet. Some folks continue to be engaged in endless worst-case-scenario thinking. Others struggle with continued uncertainty and not knowing what to do about it all. It feels like disjointed incrementalism “on steroids,” i.e. knowing where you want to go but not knowing how to get there.
Robert Neimeyer, a psychology professor at the University of Memphis and one of the world’s most prolific grief researchers, writes, “A central process in grieving is the attempt to reaffirm or reconstruct a world of meaning that has been challenged by loss.” Right now, many people are wanting to “reconstruct a world of meaning” but are at a complete loss about how to do this, and, in particular, where to begin.
Brene’ Brown in her book, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience (Random House, 2021) writes, “In my research, three foundational elements of grief emerged from the data: loss, longing, and feeling lost.” When it comes to the subject of loss, she notes: “While death and separation are tangible losses associated with grief, some of the participants [in her study] describe losses that are more difficult to identify or describe. These include the loss of normality, the loss of what could be, and the loss of what we thought we knew or understand about something or someone.”
While some of us lost loved ones during the early waves of COVID, and others loss friends and neighbors, all of us loss a sense of “normality.” We have lost what could have been during the past three years, and we struggle to find a new sense of what is normal. We also have lost “what we thought we knew or understood” about people and how they respond and treat each other. In short, we have seen the worse and the best during the pandemic.
Brene’ Brown also notes the following about grief: “Related to loss is longing. Longing is not conscious wanting; it’s an involuntary yearning for wholeness, for understanding, for meaning, for the opportunity to regain or even simply touch what’ve lost.” I believe there is a strong desire for wholeness, meaning, and connection right now in society and within the work place. People want to do things that matter and they want to experience joy after so much time spent worrying, adapting, and worrying some more.
Finally, Brene’ Brown explains the concept of feeling lost. As she writes, “Grief requires us to reorient every part of our physical, emotional, and social worlds…. The more difficult it is for us to articulate our experience of loss, longing, and feeling lost to people around us, the more disconnected and alone we feel. Talking about grief is difficult in a world that wants us to “get over it” or a community that is quick to pathologize grief.”
Currently, I think many people want to “get over” the pandemic, and want to be done with the grief related to it. In particular, they are tired of talking about COVID and the impact of COVID, and they are tired of dealing with it. However, just because we want something to go away does not mean that it actually will go away.
Furthermore, one outcome of this prolonged global pandemic is that many people are feeling alone and lonely. They struggle making connections. They struggle keeping connections. They struggle with the loss of connections. What we have to understand, and Brene’ Brown so aptly states, is that “When a person adapts to a loss, grief is not over.” As David Kessler, one of the world’s foremost experts on grief, explains, “Each person’s grief is as unique as their fingerprint. But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed. That doesn’t mean needing someone to try to lessen it or reframe it for them. The need is for someone to be fully present to the magnitude of their loss without trying to point out the silver lining.” Once I read Kessler’s insight, I had to sit with it for a long time. I needed to absorb his words and ponder them so I understood it at a head level and a heart level.
FYI: To be continued on Wednesday.
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