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If you would have told me in March 2020 that we’d still be in the midst of a global pandemic, I would have scoffed at you. Yet here we are. We are quickly closing in on the two-year anniversary.
I was reflecting on where we were at the start of the pandemic. We told each other that we are all in this together, that we need to have patience and kindness with each other as we internalized the dramatic changes that we were experiencing and had little control over. We banged pots for our health-care workers and had parades in the streets for our students. I heard Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe comment that hope is the idea that we aren’t walking alone. At the start of the pandemic, as unsettling as it was, there was an element of hope, that we were facing it together.
Flash forward to today in 2022, and that idea of being in this together seems so distant. We have multiple factors striving to divide us. Topics and issues that never would have been a big deal have become highly polarized and politicized when they didn’t have to be. My email inbox is overrun some days with this divisiveness. It’s on the news we watch and in our social media timelines.
But here’s the thing: though it’s now a cliché that none of us really want to hear anymore, we are, in fact, still in this together. Though we are exhausted and frustrated by the intrusions into our personal and professional lives, the fact remains that we need to continue to treat people with grace and kindness. The last few weeks have been especially super tough for all of us. But as Hanley-Dafoe also noted, hope also provides us with the stamina we need to carry the heavy loads we are all bearing, but we need to continue to do it together. ❚
