As we come out of our third and most deadly lockdown in the UK, my reflections on the last year have shifted from transitory leadership learnings to much more fundamental societal perspectives we should take into the future.
For most of us in the middle-class west, our collective reality since the second world war has been relatively stable. In the landscape of history in fact, that period was the longest period of peace and prosperity in documented history. This is probably one of the reasons that this period has come as such a shock, and collective resilience tested to the core.
During the 1919 pandemic my great grandparents suffered the loss of two daughters aged 9 and 15, dying 3 weeks apart. My family kept the death of the older sibling Dolly a secret from the 9-year-old Lily as she lay stricken on her own death bed with Spanish flu. The manifold tragedy of this familial legend is now brought into stark relief in our current reality. I have thought long and hard about why I lacked true reflection on my great grandparent’s loss given the relative short period between my Great Aunts death and my birth only 56 years later. My Aunt carries the name of one of the children that died, a memory of a sister long lost. Despite this it never crossed my mind to look at what happened to them or think about the societal earthquake that caused it.
It seems our connections to generational perspective has been lost somewhere along the way as we too quickly move on from the traumas of the past and imagine they could never happen again. This is probably my greatest concern, soon we’ll all be back at Nando’s and this will be a long lost memory.
The internal reverberations of the last 12 months for generations that have known nothing, but stability is significant. Our collective perspective of continuous growth and progression has been rocked to the core, even though it is a very recent economic perspective. I think this has been at the root of many peoples mental health challenges - the feeling this sort of thing happens in the past, and not to people like us.
The failures of our economic models, and how transitory they appear faced with this reality should be something we take very seriously, acknowledging the reality that so many of our fellow citizens have co-existed with this kind of fearful transience for generations regardless of global events as a consequence of the structural inequality these systems have now shown in stark relief.
Those of us doing well from the system should take note of this. The rhetoric which has evolved through the media, particularly in the last 20 years about those that do not keep up with the Jones’s, the disparaging judgemental enforcement of power through government policy and social systems to those groups, is shameful. We have acted as if resilience and success is about meritocratic cause and effect, we can all see now its much more linked to contextual opportunity than any of us would like to admit.
Without social connection, its now much easier to understand how opportunity and mental health decline significantly. When there is nothing to do and no where to go, we all eat and drink too much of the wrong things to get through the day. We should all remember that when falling into judgement about peoples lifestyles. We can all see much more clearly now that loneliness and disconnection is a killer that comes in multiple forms.
So, what should we take into the future from this time? Hopefully, a little more compassion for the context and perspective of others. To listen to the experiences of those that have gone before us and realise that circumstances can derail the best of us. Sit down and listen to your Grandparents to hear what they have endured, as we have a lot to learn.
Most of all I hope we ensure we continue to remember those who will carry on being trapped in isolation and reduced opportunity when Covid is long forgotten. Whether that is a carer who has no choice than to not work to care for a loved one, or an older person suffering with crippling loneliness due to bereavement. At the end of the day we are all a product of time and circumstances. When our collective global experience ends, lets remember those who remain in an ongoing but much more private storm.