Like everyone else I know, I’m tired of the pandemic.
Now that we’re at the one-year mark of the beginning of the first Ontario lockdown, it’s hard to avoid the commemorative pieces flooding the airwaves. I’m ignoring them all. I’ve lived through it. I don’t need a reminder.
And yet, as someone who loves words, I’ve been thinking about the nouns, verbs and adjectives that have been created (or modified) to describe Covid 19. We’ve been told to “shelter in place” in order to “flatten the curve“. We talk about “airborne transmission” and “variants“. Are we “asymptomatic“, while we watch the rates of “community transmission“? We no longer live in families or have friends, but are part of a “bubble“. Many of us are thankful for “CERB“. Some of us can not only rhyme off the “Five Zones of Public Health Measures“, we know which ‘colour’ applies to the location of our loved ones.
With all the new words we’ve added to our vocabulary this year, I’ve decided to resurrect an old word, and use it in a new context.
My New Favourite Word–“Dialectical”
At its most basic level, dialectical means that two opposing things can be true at the same time. For example: when squirrels ate the sunflower seeds I planted last spring, I was angry that my dream of a sunflower hedge had been ‘digested’; while also feeling happy that the squirrels had found food.
Dialectics (or Dialectical Method) is as old as ancient Greece. It was a method to hold a discussion between two or more people who held different points of view but wanted to figure out the truth by using logical argument. Emotions weren’t involved.
Today, the idea of dialectics is best known as the basis for DBT (Dialectical Behavioural Therapy). In DBT, a therapist and client work together to develop the client’s acceptance of their current situation, while at the same time, working on ways to change it. Details about DBT can be found here.
But why is this my new theme word?
The Idea of Control
Our desire for control is the theme behind The Serenity Prayer, written by Reinhold Niebuhr (1872-1971). It asks:
God, grant me the serenity to
accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.
No matter how you describe your religion or spirituality, one lesson over the past year is that there’s very little we can control. Many of us have spent a lot of time and energy fighting against this truth–with little success.
The Serenity Prayer speaks to the dialectics of life–the things we can change versus those we can’t. Pandemic time versus ‘a new normal’. In other words, accepting today as it is while planning for the future.
Living Dialectically
A lot of articles are being written about how the authors are planning to live post-pandemic. While they have no control over how long Covid will dictate a large part of their daily existence, they see themselves applying the lessons they have learned over the past year–less rushing around, less spending, more time with loved ones, lots more hugs…
They are living dialectically…accepting where they are today while working towards what they want in the future.
One way to do this is to create a “future” list. However, the list doesn’t include just activities, but how we want to live–emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Are there new things we need to learn to fulfill our vision? People we need to reconnect with? Skills to develop?
As we move through this pandemic, we can choose to do so with hope. As we create our individual lists, what do we hope for? Emily Dickinson said:
“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.”
As we keep living dialectically today, let’s keep leaving seeds out for the ‘thing with feathers’.
And now…an amazing video. Enjoy!
