Stay Strong For Us: Messages for Hope, Resilience, and Courage

Messages for Hope, Resilience, and Courage.

It has almost become a cliché to call the confluence of calamities that afflicted the year 2020 – calamities that are still playing out into 2021 – unprecedented. It has also become a cliché to speak of “the light at the end of the tunnel.” We all, each in our own ways, hope and pray that a Covid-19 vaccine will bring a quick end to the coronavirus pandemic, but it’s just not that simple, is it?

For one thing, there is not just one tunnel. There is the Covid-19 (and a growing number of variants) tunnel. There is the economic recession tunnel, the social and racial injustice tunnel, the political polarization tunnel. While these have been brought together in a catastrophic confluence by the coronavirus pandemic, each tunnel is of different length and requires a different light to bring us to its end.

For another, most of us are at different points in each tunnel. For some people Covid-19 has been devastating, while others have been infected but been asymptomatic. Some people have fully recovered while others will be long-haulers, and there is still no real understanding what the long-term health implications will be for them.

Likewise, millions of people have lost jobs and thousands of businesses have gone under, but others have managed to hang on, or even prosper, through the recession. For some a short-term palliative such as extended unemployment benefits or a payroll protection plan loan will see them through, while others might never fully recover financially.

Both Covid-19 and the economic recession have been more brutal for racial minorities and those who were already socially and financially disadvantaged. And while the United States has the world’s highest mortality rate from Covid-19, it will also have a disproportionate share of the world’s vaccine supply.

Beyond these tunnels, once we reach the lights at their ends, there will be more tunnels. As one important example, Diana Hendel (who is a contributor to Stay Strong For Us) and her colleague Dr. Mark Goulston say that Covid-19 was the earthquake; a likely epidemic of PTSD will be the aftershocks. Nicholas Christakis, author of the book Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live, projects that we will not fully recover some sense of normalcy before 2024, if then. Those who have lost love ones to the disease will never fully recover.

The Ultimate Paradox

Banal bromides like “that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and “one door closes, another door opens” are often true, but people rarely want to hear them at precisely the time they most need to hear them. That is the ultimate paradox of human motivation: Whatever you most need in your life will be hardest for you to find at the time when you need it most.

It’s easy to have courage when your fears are small, easy to persevere when the obstacles are mere speed bumps. It’s when your fears are monstrous that it’s hardest to find the courage to confront them; it’s when obstacles are mountainous that it’s hardest to find the determination to persevere. It’s easy to have a sunny disposition when the world is smiling at you, easy to give to others when you have everything you need yourself. It’s easy to not complain when you have little to complain about – much harder when you have legitimate reasons to complain, as do most people in this era of pandemic, recession, disruption, and polarization.

The messages of hope and encouragement in Stay Strong For Us will help you ensure that these emotional resources are there for you to tap into when you need them most.