Asking Ourselves, “What In The World Is Happening?”
The past few months have been pretty intense to say the least. Many of us are dealing with seemingly insurmountable hurdles—job loss, depression, anxiety, hunger, eviction and homelessness, loss of loved ones, and debt just to name a few. Or maybe you’re one of the luckier folks and you’re just feeling general shitty-ness about what is happening all around you. Whatever the case, its impossible not to wonder what the heck is happening. Its difficult to comes to term with everything or to think about what the consequences could be when the dust has settled. Its hard to know where to get reliable information. And its definitely most difficult to determine what is the correct response to it all.
As you move about the world, you’ll probably find that you can’t seem to go anywhere or talk to anyone with referencing the chaotic nature of today’s events. The phrases “novel corona-virus,” “these uncertain times,” or likely some combination of these is making its way into nearly every conversation. And these times are indeed uncertain, but how do we cope? Historically, we’ve seen that times of crisis have the tendency to bring people together physically and otherwise to tackle the situation together. The situation that we find ourselves in, however, makes that literally impossible. As if society hadn’t been trending more toward isolation and polarization anyway due heavily to the explosion of social media and certain technologies, our situation has become even more dire since effects of the virus and its consequences could last for years—perhaps decades to come.
Even if we can’t ever figure out what in the world is going on, what we can start to do is determine what getting ahead of healing looks like. My inclination is that we’ll need to work out how that is going to happen as a collective. Belonging and connection are human needs and in a time when many people’s needs aren’t being met, we need to make sure these still are. This organization offers the opportunity to use communication strategies as coping strategies for whatever could be going on in your life. It provides the chance for you to connect with others and also to connect with yourself to address what we often times want to ignore.
