It would be irresponsible and cruelly glib to imply that the Covid-19 pandemic wasn’t difficult, and that the results haven’t produced fear, anger and for so many, tragedy. Those things are all true. Whether it’s Covid, a natural disaster or human-caused, loss of livelihood, loss of well-being and even loss of life are real and averting our gaze is a disrespectful pretense. We are all ethically and compassionately charged with the responsibility to help, to examine our own lives and behavior to see if we are thinking, acting and speaking in a way that relieves suffering and if not, to look deeply for a better insight. With that said, I’d like to just talk first about how words and the stories our minds make with them can set the stage for…everything, and then about why embracing and bringing narrative life to the right words can be awakening.
Read these words and then just let them settle in for a bit noticing how you feel physically:
“LOCKDOWN” “QUARANTINE” “ISOLATION” “DESTRUCTION” “RISK”
One more time-there is nothing wrong with these words and they point directly at some real-world referents that are essential and beneficial when we can see them as they are.
Now, try these:
“RETREAT” “QUIET” “CONTEMPLATION” “CARE” “SAFETY”
My own experience is that the body sensations each word-set evokes are different. No, they don’t “mean” the same things, but they can describe different aspects of the same experience and those experiential components can co-exist. What is fascinating is that by placing our attention on these labels, we actually can change how we perceive, feel and think about the “reality” of our lived experience.
I’m wired as an introvert (INFP if you’re Myers-Briggsish). It isn’t that introverts “don’t like people”-far from it. It simply means that I’m comfortable living in my head and in fact derive energy from that silence. For most of us “intro” types, we need a lot of that recharge time between periods of engagement with other folks-but when we engage it can be quite robust and fulfilling. For instance, when my colleagues and I are “doing” (it is the word we use and it’s an interesting choice) a StoryJam-our collaborative innovation work, I LOVE the performance energy of sharing a “stage” all day, exhorting a room full of relative strangers to levels of imaginative play they would not have thought possible. The difference for me is, around 4:00 when we’re finished I am heard to say “All done extroverting now. See you all in a couple of hours.” I don’t need a nap, I just need it to be quiet with no requirement to engage-what I call recharging.
So, if we go back to our word lists, I have a neutral to slightly tense reaction to the first set. But perhaps because of my introverted bias, the second set is appealing. Those words evoke the promise of ease, even pleasure.
My body relaxes. My emotional tone shifts toward interest, and curiosity. Scene: PANDEMIC Same house. Can’t leave. Still have to wash my hands and wear my mask if I even see the neighbors at the mailbox. Still bored with my own cooking. Still wearing the dog out with too many walks—but, leaning toward happiness.
We were fortunate at IDEAS to have been able to continue doing much of our work during the peak of the pandemic. Damn, that’s really weak. We were INSANELY LUCKY. One aspect of this serendipity is that a new work style emerged that is pretty time-dense so it isn’t like I was “stuck with nothing to do”. But a magic thing happened-even through there are exactly the same number of minutes in a day, somehow each minute got longer.