We are all grappling to adjust to life in a pandemic and some of us are probably finding it easier than others. If your head is spinning trying to make sense of it all – you are not alone. The Easter holiday coming up may be the perfect opportunity to take time to pause and reflect.
Unprecedented!
When I first heard of the coronavirus barely a couple of months ago, I didn’t really know nor understand what it was about to unleash. Then the discourse, political, public and private began to shift. “Unprecedented… once in a hundred year event… the new norm… life as we knew it... devastating… anxious and fearful… people are dying...”
Sometimes words try hard to capture the enormity of the moment. And this moment in which we all find ourselves can feel overwhelming. Who would have thought that the medi-jargon, “COVID-19”, would take such a powerful hold of our lives. I know that a degree of anxiety continues to bubble away. That these are indeed “unprecedented” times hit home particularly when across many workplaces the talk was about working from home. You know that something is going to be the new norm when it gets its very own acronym - WFH!!! Think about it: how do you transition an 85 year old social services agency like CatholicCare, that has always valued relationships in the face to face sense, to an essentially WFH outfit? Yet this is happening as we speak!
I have an old battered Melways that sits under the driver’s seat in my car. Yes, I have a GPS on my phone. But there is something about the that old, battered Melways that is comforting. And yes, there have been a couple of times that it actually proved to be more useful than the GPS. That was, if truth be told, probably a long, long time ago. There are points in life that really challenge us. Profoundly. My sense is that this time is one of these. The old Melways just won’t cut it now. At at the deepest of levels, there is that will within us to quietly but courageously begin the task to draw up new maps as well as seriously update some of the old ones. In this COVID-19 environment, our challenge is to be physically distant and yet socially and professionally connected.
Victor Frankl discovered that within us, there is a “will to meaning”, or as I like to put it, our inner process of meaning-making. Frankl was a survivor of the Nazi death camps and Holocaust and took this experience into his work as a psychotherapist. He developed an approach called logo-therapy. The word “logo” or “logos” has its origins in ancient Greek; it means “the word”. As I reflect on this unprecedented time in which I find myself in, I ask what are the words that I can draw on to connect me into my own meaning making; my philosophy of life; or belief system – whatever shape or form this may take?
I remember the original Jurassic Park movie that came out in the 1990’s – that was last century and the CGI (another acronym!) made those dinosaurs look so incredibly real. It was amazing to see young adults with that wide-eyed, opened mouthed wonder and receptivity to what was then something new and incredible. And just as I began to ask, how did they do this, almost on cue actor Jeff Goldblum, who plays the character of the nerdy but ethical scientist, Dr Ian Malcolm answers, “If there's one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories, and crashes through barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh, well, there it is. ... Life will find a way”.
COVID-19 of course elicits a very different response. For it is real, not a movie! What it does is it places me in touch with the inner spaces of the heart where I would probably rather not go. It places me in touch with my mortality, that life is fragile and vulnerable. That we can and do lose the ones we love.
And so, as I draw this reflection to a close, I find myself searching for words, other words that are different to the ones I started with. As the Easter season draws to its culmination, I conjure up the word “life”! Jesus of Nazareth was good at logo-therapy. He talked about “life to the full…”. That sense that life, death and new life are inextricably linked. And that life will find a way!
Paul Zammit, Senior Manager, Pastoral Care Services
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