Emerge - Ramble Five
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Ramble Four asked contributors to check up to 3 statements that best reflected how ramblers were feeling at the halfway point of our Emerge journey. In case you didn’t get a chance to check out last month’s contribution form, here are those statements:
I am emerging very cautiously and observe that most people seem more comfortable in returning to ‘normal’ than I am
I just take one day at a time, and how I show up is greatly dependent on the place, space, and who I am with/might come across
I am moving around life pretty much as normal
I worry that another surge/variant is around the corner
We are going to be living with COVID for a long time, we just need to adjust and get on with our lives understanding and living with some risk
I remain anxious and worried
I realize the risk is much lower now, but I feel the carry over of the fear and am not ready/or able to emerge with any sense of freedom
I feel like I have been through a traumatic time but I can’t pin point exactly what the trauma is yet, I just know I need to recover from something
I feel a huge sense of relief
I am energized about reconnecting with my pre-Covid life as well as finally meeting some new friends/colleagues that I have made over the last year in person
I am slowly starting to recognize myself again
The past year has been traumatizing in so many ways. I am very much still healing
I feel like a different person than this time last year, and not in a good way
I feel like a different person than this time last year, in a good way
I continue to struggle to feel safe, or optimistic
Now that restrictions have lifted/are lifting, I am intentionally making some changes in my life based on what I have learned over the last year
Things still feel out of my control and how I feel fluctuates daily
I sense that people are rushing to get back to how things were pre-covid and that I had hoped people would move forward, not revert back
I'm optimistic that some of the hard lessons we have learned over the last 15 months will effect lasting change
I've been ready and waiting for life to get moving again for some time. Excited it's finally here
I can feel myself slipping back into my old ways of being and I am working hard not to
I'm moving into a new and exciting phase of my life
Ramble Five shares the results - and the winner is… All of the Above. While there was one statement that ranked highest, it is clear that ‘how we are doing’ covers the full spectrum of emotional states. I guess I had anticipated this which is why I included such a broad set of statements in the first place. One contributor went as far as checking off every box (that’s my partner Ed, he’s never been a rule follower!) Ed is answering YES – I feel all these things, YES – I can feel all of these things at once, YES - each one of these statements represents my current or regular experience.
The statement that scored highest was #5: We are going to be living with COVID for a long time, we just need to adjust and get on with our lives understanding and living with some risk. In the follow-up question, ‘Did one statement strike a particular chord with you? If so, why?’ Malcolm said that #5 was, ‘Simply common sense.’ Jamie said, ‘#5 is true but that doesn’t mean I like it.’ Along those lines Matt said ‘I am completely uncomforted by the fact that #5 resonated with me most and it does not change the fact that I fluctuate daily between optimism and absolute pessimism.’ Another contributor categorized #5 as Acceptance, drawing a parallel with Kübler-Ross’s work from the late 1960s on the Five Stages of Grief.
The visual above places ‘acceptance’ at the end of a process, an arrival point. For me the direct parallel ends here because COVID is still very much alive and in fact thriving. However, it did help me to make the connection back to Pauline Boss’s work on Ambiguous Loss – Navigating Loss without Closure. This groundbreaking work named the experience of grieving when a loved one is not dead but missing, or absent through an illness such as dementia, or alive but no longer in your life, like a former spouse, or estranged sibling. (Here’s her interview again with Krista Tippet from 2016). Accepting that our (forgive me) ‘new normal’ is not static but persistently unsettled does little to comfort, let alone provide the guidance and direction we crave as we navigate continued uncertainty. Boss reminds us that while acceptance may not be comforting, it can be helpful:
The Western idea is that suffering is something you should get over… or fix it or find some solution for it… But here’s the crux: Now and then, there’s a problem that has no solution. Now and then, there are problems that don’t have a perfect fix. And then this idea of holding two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time (they might come back and they might not) is very useful for stress reduction. (Boss)
So, while Ramble Four suggests that (to varying degrees) we have accepted the need to get on with our lives with a certain amount of risk, it also told us that we continue to live with All of the Above. Perhaps your model looks more like this?
Ramble 5 is the last leg of our journey, and the final opportunity for you to contribute before Ramble Six brings our time together to an end. Since the beginning of the project, I have had in my mind a question I wanted to leave you with, but the diversity of experience you shared in response to Ramble Four’s question prompted me to rethink. I want you to pose the final question. As you reflect back on your journey, do you have a powerful question you want to leave your fellow ramblers with? Perhaps there will be one burning question that we are all grappling with? Perhaps the result will again be… All of the Above. The google form is below. Please fill out by August 23rd.
I hope you will all join me and each other as we lace up our boots one last time.