Here’s the scene. You are facing a life-and-death situation in which you are suddenly in charge of people’s lives and livelihoods. You have no training for the situation and no help appears to be on the way. You have no real authority but full responsibility. Resources are limited to only what you have at hand. You don’t know what you’re doing. You are overwhelmed and yet you must still move on.
Sounds like the script idea for any number of Hollywood productions over the years, right? This scenario of uncertainty fits any number of our government and political leaders in recent months. It also fits caregivers every day.
Gracefully handling uncertainty is surely a hallmark of caregivers. Like accomplished gamblers, pursuing with confidence and revealing little, we traverse uncharted territory with hardly an outward indication that we are no more knowledgeable about what is coming than the next person. We don’t behave recklessly. We just understand that not knowing is as good a place to be when we don’t have any other options.
Reckless Uncertainty
Enter the pandemic of COVID-19. Talk about uncertainty. Leaders providing confused leadership, if any at all. Words being weaponized and used to no particularly useful ends. Science being adopted and discarded at will. I have never seen so many frightened people before.
As this confused world so threatens our personal sanity and security, why am I still feeling so fairly relaxed? I’m bummed because some of the shops I enjoy are not as physically accessible but hey, there’s still online, right? Popular media indicates I should be stressed out and seeking help (spending money) for my victim-hood. Being comfortable is apparently politically incorrect these days. I’m good with that.
The scale of the pandemic has been new but the crisis intervention state of mind needed to respond constructively to it, has been kind of old news. Learn what you can about the situation/problem, see what resources you have at hand, go forward with your best guess of appropriate action. Repeat. Who would have thought that knowing how to manage difficult times at home would be such a useful skill set for managing poor policy in response to a global problem?
Let me qualify that. Not all leadership has had problems with… well… leading, but the successful ones have been overshadowed by the poor decisions of lesser ones. What’s the right answer? What’s the wrong answer? With so many folks appointing themselves knowledgeable leaders and issuing orders haphazardly, is it any wonder we’ve lost much forward momentum on solutions?
Moments of Reflection
With some extra time on my hands for reflection, I am seeing that this is all a caregiving scenario – just on a much larger scale. Known and unknown parameters playing out at what seems high speed, with important stakes at risk. Just a familiar caregiving scenario set on an unfamiliar worldwide stage.
There is something comforting in knowing that problems that play out globally are in essence the problems that play out at home. Taking care of one another, especially when one cannot adequately care for themselves, is comforting. Across all of these anxious racial, cultural, and political divides we have suffered recently, a constant of human experience continues to abide. We truly are alike in so many ways, both in how we seek joy in Life and how we respond to threats to that joy. Our methods may vary but we all protect and safeguard our vulnerable ones in times of uncertainty. We all step up and do what we have to. Plenty of bad actors will be around to grab attention and play up their own insecurities. The rest of us will be settled in for the duration, knowing that we’ve got control of ourselves when circumstances are ambiguous.
So, when risk-adverse colleagues and friends heave that deep sigh and bemoan their dramatic survivor-ship of this whole tragic scenario, smile and be supportive. Speak from your place of strength because that is where you live. You have worked your way through tougher circumstances before and the current situation is no more or less challenging. Just try not to laugh about it too much. People in uncertain times lack a certain sense of humor.
I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity.
― Gilda Radner
Dad's Back 