I don’t know who needs to read this. But if launching this message in a daily newspaper can change things for even a handful of people, it will have been worth it.
It is completely understandable, after two years of the pandemic, to not be the same person in terms of your physical and mental health, your emotional, social or even financial situation. It’s human not to feel as productive, upbeat, or just as healthy. If this is not your case, so much the better. If you recognize yourself in this portrait, there is nothing abnormal, shameful or bizarre about it. We are, after all, social animals deeply influenced by their environment. And this environment, over the past two years, has been radically transformed.
Two years ago, Quebec was invaded by rainbows. We then announced the unprecedented measures with which we have more or less learned to live since. On March 13, 2020, a health emergency was declared. On March 16, schools were closed as well as the Canadian border. On March 21, all indoor and outdoor gatherings were banned. On March 22, all “non-essential” businesses were closed. We were told it was only for a few weeks. That after the storm, precisely, came the rainbow. This happy tomorrow, we are still waiting for it.
According to compilations from Johns Hopkins University, COVID-19 has killed more than six million people worldwide since the start of the pandemic. In Quebec, mortality was more concentrated among the elderly in general and among residents of CHSLDs in particular. The virus has shown itself to be ruthless towards individuals as well as towards institutions whose health was more fragile. Even today, we do not have the perspective necessary — nor the government transparency required — to fully examine the collapse of the health care system and the epidemic of burnout among its personnel.
Two years after the shock of March 2020, we also see that despite government assistance, several small businesses have found themselves in difficulty. Women, who still assume a large part of the domestic tasks and the education of the children, have been particularly penalized by the performance requirements in the context of teleworking. During periods of confinement and curfew, the most vulnerable in society have suffered. Violence between intimate partners has increased, and the mental health of the population has deteriorated. It is still difficult to understand the impact of the crisis of recent years on the development of children and adolescents, whose schooling and socialization have been profoundly disrupted.
The pandemic has also weakened supply chains just as governments are distributing funds to individuals and businesses affected by the lockdowns. These and other factors have contributed to the widespread inflation that we are currently experiencing. The cost of living is rising and wages are not keeping up, while the housing crisis and skyrocketing property prices are exacerbating wealth gaps across the country.
Two years into the pandemic, the West now also faces the very real possibility of a Third World War. We are bombarded day after day with deeply disturbing images of armed conflict. So much so that we almost sometimes forget the climate crisis, which certainly does not take a break in its progression.
With hindsight, we can clearly see the share of denial behind the “it’s going to be fine” displayed in countless households in 2020. This difficulty in facing reality is understandable. The vast majority of us had not experienced such social shock, and we were ill-prepared to face it. Through denial, the human brain seeks first and foremost to protect itself.
This dismal record, it is nevertheless important to do so. Without sensationalism, modesty, or refusal of the truth. Not to stun or despair, but simply to take note of the weight of the realities that are ours. Rare are the individuals who have not been affected in one way or another by this social context of recent years. We all carry this load in our own way, with more or less ease, while we go about our daily activities.
To be aware of this weight is to reaffirm essential observations. Either parents, exhausted from the waltz of school closures and reopenings, upset by the attacks on their work-family balance, worried about the health of their children or their loved ones as health measures are withdrawn, exhausted by the constant requests for adaptation since the beginning of the pandemic, are not bad parents. And that children whose behavior is affected by all these social and family changes are not bad children.
Friendships that have not been nourished as much in the context of repeated confinement and bans on travel and gatherings are not necessarily fragile friendships. And families whose members have drifted apart as a result of deeply divisive debates over vaccination and health measures are not necessarily toxic families. And workers who do not have the same concentration, the same availability or the same performance as before are not all incompetent.
This empathy for oneself and for others, this resilience, we cultivate it in particular by taking the right measure of everything that has affected our lives for two years now. Our ability to continue to function, somehow, in spite of everything, then appears as the miracle that it is.