Finding Peace in Covid Times
There is hope even when we have strong & different opinions
My family has been split down the middle for the past year and a half. Half believe strongly in the government mandates, masks, and vaccines. The others are equally as strong believing that none of it is true or necessary. We are all intelligent, big personalities who weren’t going to back down ever… until a miracle occurred and we all decided to get together.
I think it began with the “mandate side” reaching out to try to make peace. Initially, the others had no interest. The guns and ammunition were all ready to roll at any moment. Getting together would be impossible. Everyone was too easily triggered. If anyone had slipped up for just a moment, absolute war would have ensued and real damage done.
But then, after a few months, nobody wanted to fight anymore. We had been a really close family before all this and something was drawing us back together.
Laughing Around the Table
Our family is three sisters (in our 50s), our dad, our children, and a few significant others. This weekend, we sat around the table laughing, singing, and having the most amazing time together. We made dinner together. We sang songs from our childhood entertaining our grown children. We laughed until our stomachs hurt.
My sisters and I were connected in a way that was new. We were united in a way that I haven’t experienced in our 50 years together. It was hard to imagine that two months ago we wondered if we would ever see each other again.
But there was an unspoken agreement — that we would never talk about covid. Every child, partner, and sister knew that this topic would never come up… ever.
I was now understanding that old rule to never discuss religion and politics. Our ancestors who made this rule had lived through wars and difficult times just like these… and perhaps they too simply wanted to get together with family even when opinions were so radically different and impossible to change.
Bringing Our Best Game Forward
But there was more than just this unspoken agreement. It wasn’t just a topic that we were avoiding. We wanted to be together. We wanted to get along. We wanted to feel connected. We wanted to feel like a family again.
So we were on our best behaviour.
We were kinder than usual. We were careful of sarcasm. We asked each other questions about our lives. We truly listened. We weren’t caught up in our own dramas. We didn’t bring any old family issues to the table.
In many ways, we were much nicer to each other than we were before. All families have their “stuff” and we were no different. We can be passive aggressive. We can pick on each other. We can be lazy and we can be domineering.
But not this weekend.
This weekend, it was like we were meeting each other for the first time. We were hanging out because we wanted to be friends. It was like 50 years of history just got erased and we got to start fresh.
Unconditional Love
This is something that has been a huge topic for me since March 2020. I lost so many friends who “headed to the other side”. But what if we didn’t want to be divided? What if we didn’t want to make the other person wrong for their beliefs? What if we just loved them and honoured their perception of things?
This seemed almost impossible in today’s climate. Both sides have enough ammunition to bury the other. Both sides can be totally amped up to glare and stomp their feet and blame the other for everything that is going wrong.
But what if we put away our guns? What if we just lay them down in the battlefield and remember how much we love this other person? What’s the point in fighting anyway?
The Christmas Truce of 1914
I can tell you that two months ago, if you had asked me if I would ever see the other half of my family, I would have said “Likely not”. We are all really strong personalities and when big personalities bring out the ammunition, damage is done.
And yet… a total peace-fire was called and all injuries forgotten.
It reminds me of the story of Christmas Eve of 1914 where a soldier began singing the song Silent Night when the fighting on the battlefields of WWI had stopped. Walter Kirchhoff, a German officer, was a tenor with the Berlin Opera. In the silence during the cease-fire, he began singing Silent Night in German and then in English. Soon, the English troops joined in. They crawled into No Man’s Land and sang the song together… forever changed… remembering who they all really were.
I think that this is possible for us too.
There is always hope.
