Belonging, Compassion, Survival: The Great Post-COVID Tasks

Source: Adobe stock image by denisismagilov, licensed by Ravi Chandra

Thanks to medical science, public health efforts, and vaccinations, we are tenuously and tentatively emerging from 15+ months of a global pandemic that has challenged every system of sustenance we have. “Revenge travel” and “making up for missed moments” are part of an understandable “flight to health.” Many people in the US are looking forward to a summer of joyful reunions.

However, issues such as political instability, racism and racial injustice, violence, inequity, migration and refugees, international conflict and climate change have emerged more prominently in our collective psyche. At the same time, many of us are still grieving losses, processing difficult and complex emotions about the world and our relationships, and trying to find meaning and a way forward past seemingly insurmountable obstacles in our socio-cultural environment, made worse by ugly short-term power motives by politicians and supported by a dysregulated media environment. People in this country and around the world are still struggling for economic, physical, and emotional survival. People around the world are still threatened by COVID-19.

It’s a heady, and even brooding, time. Unbridled American optimism and hope are uneasy bedfellows with rage, frustration, caution, pragmatism, and even despair. It’s a potent mix of possibility, if we can emerge with a deeper sense of our values and priorities.

COVID has made it more clear than ever that we are interdependent — our well-being depends on the well-being of others in countless ways. Our identities are not separate. Our suffering is not separate from one another’s suffering. How we relate to each other and relate to distress determines so much — and we are all works-in-progress.

When I see my friends again in person, I’ll really want to know what they learned from this year, about themselves and about the world. I want to know what still hurts, what brought them joy and peace, what they’re still looking for in their lives, and what they’re still wondering about. We’re all on journeys of identity, belonging, and wellness, and our journeys are connected. We all have to work with “the four buckets” of work, love, play, and health. We all need safety and understanding. And of course, we have to find ways of providing these to each other as well.

Source: Adobe stock image by Rawpixel dot com, licensed by Ravi Chandra

For me, the tools that keep me going are my commitments to keep working at “The Five Things:” mindfulness, compassion, relationship, creativity, and insight. As I wrote in a recent Psychology Today post, our true self is that which creatively addresses suffering. And since the opposite of suffering is belonging, another way of finding and expressing our true selves is doing our best to create belonging.

That’s not an easy task in a society where we seem to prize achievements, wealth, political power, status, and possessions as markers for “winning” and being seen. Belonging seems like this quaint, gooey, woo woo, wide-eyed, airy-fairy, frivolous, and fruitless West Coast notion. Especially after youth, and especially after the rise in narcissism noted by psychologists Campbell and Twenge, many people tend to think of their relationships in utilitarian ways. “What will this person bring to me?” “What will this person add to my life?” So many of us avoid meaningful relatedness that doesn’t have a “reason” other than simply liking the other person, being interested in their well-being, and seeing their well-being as inseparable from our own well-being. I think that’s shifted for many people this year. I’m hoping that more people have recognized that networks of caring strengthen us, and that compassion is how we do human. But our systems of caring are far from inclusive, and compassion is not yet ubiquitous or fully embodied.

I’ve described this year to my friends as “going from the talk show to the cemetery to the bonfire, with daily stops on my meditation cushion.” I’ve been fortunate to have several groups of friends who committed early on to regular conversations, and I’m fortunate that my job is to care for others, which is both immensely rewarding and challenging. I’ve been fortunate to participate in communal healing activities that have created islands of connection and belonging in a sea of suffering and intergenerational and transhistorical trauma.

My work also makes me keenly aware that there are many people who lack sincerely caring people in their lives. We live in a web of intersecting and collective traumas that could be a web of healing, but for these lacunae of absences. We are all left to our own devices (literally and figuratively) to care for our distresses, though there is no such thing as complete “self-regulation” of emotion. Total self-regulation is a harmful myth perpetuated by our individualistic culture. Self-care and self-compassion are critical and transformative tools, but we all "get by with a little help from our friends," as the song goes. Our mental health systems are overflowing, and there are many people who are not getting the care and support they need. But necessity is the mother of invention, and I hope we can find ways to rise to the occasion.

My advice would be to cultivate self-compassion, compassion for others, and genuine relationships as you move forward to life post-pandemic. As the Dalai Lama has said, “if you want to be happy, practice compassion. If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.” Conversation is one form of compassionate relationship. Start spilling your beans into some willing ear, and be a willing ear for other people’s beans.

Friends Essential Reads

The Importance of Close Friendships: We Are “Fra-mily”

Why the Best Friendships Feel Eternal

We are still all in this together.

Next up: an article describing the stages of belonging.

(c) 2021 Ravi Chandra, M.D., D.F.A.P.A.