I recall reading Miss Manners book years ago, in which she answered a person who was writing in to complain about seating at a wedding in a complicated family setting. "I hadn't realised that well-meaning but clumsy gestures were in such oversupply that we should put our energy into punishing them." I thought it a good reminder to all of us.
Yet here I am, poking fun at the people in my department who have put chalk drawing encouragements on the walkways at the entrance. As I went outside to get cell reception to send my messages, I saw Jillian and Tiffani drawing and laughed "Of course it would be you." Jillian enthusiastically said "I'm going to take that as a compliment!" Because of course she did.
But I am not quite so sympathetic to another well-meaning sentiment placed at the entrance. There is the same context, of a person who wants to be helpful and encouraging. Very likely, a nicer person than I am who wants to be reassuring, to let someone who is hurting have a little hope. Someone might package this with a serious religious statement and put the idea forward in a "It Is Well With My Soul" sense, but that is quite unlikely at my place of employment. Sorry to kick a nice person.
Everything is not going to be OK in the narrower, immediate sense. People are going to lose their jobs, their businesses, get sick, die, and each of those has a circle around them who is also hurt by those effects. False hope is a cruel thing. My hope is that those reading are able to make the leap to deeper gratitude, to an OK-ness founded on something more lasting.
Light mutterings are in some ways more dangerous than dark ones.
4 comments:
“God will never give you more than you can handle”
Even here, people may not pick up you are being ironic.
(God, of course, always gives us more than we can handle, which is the point.)
I think the fashion of littering stones-with-inspirational-messages about has been something I've found bothersome from when I first became aware of it.
but I find it especially so with regard to COVID-19 and their implicit invitation to pick up and handle something that has been recently handled by others of unknown virus status.
Nah, you got this, Unknown. This too shall pass and you are loved. Give someone a virtual hug, will ya?
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