Bridging the divide

Can sharing our feelings from the COVID years help us repair our broken bonds?

How do you feel right now about the state of the world when it comes to COVID - both the policies and the illnesses? And what kinds of feelings have you had since the beginning of the COVID phenomenon?

There have been extensive hearings on the Freedom Convoy to look at the government’s response to the Ottawa protest, and now there is a petition circulating (which I’ve signed) that calls for a national independent citizen-led inquiry on Canada’s response to COVID-19. Both the government hearings and the proposed inquiry have the aim of looking at and learning from the actions that occurred in the past, so we can move forward in a better way. While I believe inquiries play a role in increasing our knowledge of what happened, I am not sure that they alone are enough to bring those of us back together who were divided over this time.

As I see it, there are two main areas which some of us differed on these past two years. One was whether COVID-19 was a virus that deserved a massive and relatively uniform global response unlike anything we’ve experienced in our lifetimes. The other was whether individual freedom of choice mattered when it came to compliance with the measures deemed necessary to combat the virus.

For those of us that hold opinions on the matter (to my suprise I’ve learned not everybody cares that much!), we either come down on one side or the other (I first started writing about my side in July 2020). That we came down on different sides wasn’t the problem. The problem was when we assumed that the people on the other side were not just wrong, but that their views meant something bad about them.

In our inability to understand each other’s point of view (and our lack of realization that we can’t actually read each other’s minds), we came up with pejorative adjectives for people on the other side. Labels like confused, ignorant, brainwashed, manipulative, selfish, irrationally fearful or weak. These adjectives were used by many media outlets, social media commentators and government leaders, to describe those who, like me, have been speaking out or making different choices than ones that were seen as the right ones. Those on “my side” (including me) used such adjectives - out loud or in our minds - about those having the opposite perspective.

Not only did many of us use demeaning adjectives, we also made big and unquestioned assumptions of each other’s motives, considering each other to be wilfully and selfishly threatening global health and well being. With such views of each other flying around, it’s no wonder that bonds between friends and family were disrupted.

In general, and certainly when it came to COVID, we spent so much time trying to figure out what was wrong with the other side. But what we see on the outside world is always a reflection of what’s within us, and whatever negative motivations we ascribe to the other are projections of what we fear and revile within us. Our assessments of others are never objective, they are purely subjective based on our own conditioning and assumptions and only useful if we point them backwards to learn more about ourselves.

Until we stop trying to guess at each other’s motivations - or assume we know what they are - we are going to continue to belittle, accuse or misunderstand each other. I think it’s possible many of us may never understand each other’s perspective on COVID-19. What I do believe is possible is to empathize with each other. To have compassion for each other’s struggles. And to connect with each other at the level of feeling, rather than the level of rational thought.

We are only going to be able to “agree to disagree” - and perhaps even start sharing viewpoints with those who are genuinely curious - when the emotional bonds between us have been repaired. Those bonds were broken when we forgot that we are all human beings, caught up in the grips of powerful emotions that affect our interactions with each other. Since we couldn’t understand why we saw things differently, we came to the worst conclusions about each other and expressed them out loud or inferred them in our minds. Those who felt as if they were under attack often responded with fear and withdrawal, or anger and more attack. Some relationships could survive that tussle, others could not.

To move past the pain and personal wreckage of division we need to first see people as our sisters and brothers, then recognize we all have different and equally valid perspectives. We don’t have to adopt or live according to each other’s perspectives, but we allowing each other to have them is important if we want peace. Then, we need to recognize our own emotional upheaval and see how it has affected our view of the world. And finally, we can let in the feelings of others by recognizing that the emotions we’ve all experienced over these past two years were real no matter what side we were on.

Unless we have somehow reached a fabled level of enlightenment, as humans, we have feelings that arise without us choosing them. Anger, jealously, sadness, fear - these arise in us as we react to stimuli which a lifetime of conditioning has created an automatic physiological response to. That means the pain we each feel is legitimate, valid, does not need to have an excuse, and should never be dismissed.

Rather than continue to recount our grievances and arguments, might it be worth just listening to the pain of others without analyzing, discounting, or competing it as we compare it to our own? And can we share our own pain of the past two years without needing anyone other than ourselves to validate or accept it? Share our own desire for love, safety and acceptance without needing it to be reciprocated? Share just for the relief that expression may offer in allowing us to give voice to our hurt inner selves? If we share our emotions with others, can we do it without getting into the specifics of our opinions or in a way that blames others for our pain?

Expression of our pain can be done in many ways. For me, writing and speaking has always been my preferred way to do so, and I feel driven to try to express my feelings and ideas to others - hence this Substack. In an effort to share my feelings on COVID rather than my opinions, I’m going to do a bit of a chronology of the past couple of years and express some of the pain I experienced while doing my best to keep blame and judgement out of my descriptions. It gives an insider view of one person’s emotional world (a person that many have called an antivaxxer) that I hope is less up for argument than my rational essays. It’s easy to argue with each other about whether our evidence holds up, or our point of view is valid. But it’s harder to argue with each other about our pain. If you tell me you are hurt, I can’t tell you that you aren’t. I may say you shouldn’t be (we say that to each other all the time, to our detriment), but there’s simply no way that I can say that you aren’t.

I’m not offering my pain to ask for sympathy (I recently learned the term sad-fishing and that’s not what I’m doing - at least not on purpose!). I’m offering it as a potential bridge to reconnect with others who may have mistaken my pain for something other than what it was. Alongside of my own account, I touch on the pain of the people I love that I dismissed, ignored, or even became enraged by. For if I can see why I did that to other people, I can have a better understanding of why my own pain might have been deliberately or inadvertently ignored by not just others, but even by myself.

As you read my account, if you hold a different perspective, you may say that I shouldn’t have felt these emotions, that I was wrong or misinformed to feel them. I’m not saying that I was right to feel those things, or that everything I think is accurate that led to those feelings. I’m also not saying that I should have felt them, or that others would feel the same in my position. What I am saying is that I did feel them, that’s it. So if you want to know more about my experience that’s just about feelings - not so called facts or politics - here it is.

January - March 2020

News of something called the coronavirus started entering global public awareness around January 2020. The world was getting increasingly worried about it. I looked at the same news and the same statistics that everyone else was seeing and felt fine. I did my own internal and probably unconscious calculations and felt sanguine about the situation. I didn’t feel threatened for myself or others and went about my life as usual - I bought tickets to Hamilton that suddenly became available when everyone was voluntarily deciding to stay home.

Other people, particularly in the news, were expressing concern, caution and alarm. I dismissed those emotions of others - wrongly dismissed their rising fear as unreasonable and ridiculous.

March 2020 - the first lockdown

I felt utterly confused by the lockdowns. I felt trapped. I felt an incredible amount of fear (my fear was that we would be locked down forever). So many people I normally related to about life and politics seemed to think the stay at home order was okay and when I voiced my opinions about it people disagreed with me. The few times I raised my concerns no one actually said anything hurtful to me, but their raised eyebrows or response that these actions were necessary to take care of people led me to retreat inward and keep my feelings bottled up. I felt like a caged animal. I felt like I was going insane. I felt like I didn’t understand the world and no longer fit in with my people.

Other people were expressing fear - a neighbour’s children ran away from me when I walked by. Friends and family were worried about themselves or their relatives. I blocked out their fear and worry since according to my worldview worry wasn’t necessary, it was, as Spock would say, illogical and therefore not real to me. I didn’t feel compassion for them. I felt anger and disdain. I blamed other people for my feelings - all I could see was their acceptance of the necessity of the policies that I felt were responsible for my pain. Not only did I dismiss and discount their fear of the virus, I twisted their expressed desire to help others by staying home and assumed it meant they were selfish.

April 2020 - 2021 - various lockdowns and the introduction of mask mandates

I started to speak out more vocally - on social media and to friends - about my disagreement with COVID policies. I went to my first lockdown protest. Masks became mandatory. Business and service closures happened on and off.

When people didn’t agree with me I felt rejected and misunderstood, which then made me increasingly angry. I felt huge levels of despair. Every sign that I saw about social distancing made me feel like I was living in a dystopian nightmare - I felt afraid, controlled, oppressed by every sign and rule. I felt like I was being trapped in a box and that I was never going to get out. I felt like that box was going to get smaller and smaller. All my previous social insecurities seemed to be coming true - I had worried before that people didn’t want me around - now it was true! They didn’t want me around - not within six feet of them! Not in their house or workplace. They wanted screens and barricades to separate us. They only wanted to see me through a computer if at all. It made me feel like I was alone and unwanted, that people’s love for me wasn’t enough to overcome whatever was happening in the world. Like there was a limit to how much people could love me and I’d finally surpassed it.

When people criticized my views or me for having them, I felt terrible. I felt betrayed. I felt alone. I felt misunderstood with no way to correct that misunderstanding. I felt defensive and adrift.

And how did I treat people who expressed their own emotions on the other side? I couldn’t feel compassion for friends who expressed genuine fear for their families and concerns over my lack of compliance with health rules. I thought they were blaming me for spreading sickness and death with my attitude and choices and I needed some sort of armour to protect myself from their blame. That armour stopped love in its tracks. It made me selfish and unable to feel compassion for them and their fears. !!!It made me withdraw and unable to withstand challenges or questions that were posed to me about why I was acting or feeling the way I was. I was in constant defense, attack or hide mode. I also turned away from people who believed in the necessity of the lockdowns but expressed suffering from the isolation. Since I believed they should see things like me and ignore the stay at home edicts I delegitimized their pain and closed myself off from it. Rather than hearing their pain, I secretly blamed them for, as I saw it, causing it themselves, which distanced me from them.

When it came to masks, once they were widely introduced, I had a new constant trigger. Every person I saw wearing a mask made me feel alternately sad or angry. It seemed to me that masked people were now strangers. That they were afraid of me. That they were suspicious of me. That they thought I was unclean and a threat. That they wanted me away from them. My projections of their feelings then made me withdraw. Seeing the masks also made me despair for the environment. The boxes of new masks and the sanitation measures I saw everywhere made me imagine vast mounds of garbage and pollution, which made me feel sick and sad and despairing for the world. And furious and full of blame for environmental degradation at people who used or believe in masks.

And other people’s feelings? One person told me that they felt good when they saw others wearing masks because it made them feel cared for. Since I didn’t feel the same way, I basically discarded that opinion. Instead of recognizing that the feeling of being cared for is wonderful and realizing that for some, masks really truly did mean love - and who doesn’t want to feel love - I continued to see only fear and suspicion when I saw masks, rather than the love that some people were expressing by wearing them.

April 2021 - January 2022 - vaccination mandates introduced

As soon as vaccines were mentioned (relatively early on in the COVID days) I knew I wouldn’t be taking any injection related to COVID. I started to feel great alarm about the vaccine itself. I was afraid for myself but I was also afraid for everyone - for my friends, for my family, for the world. I was afraid everyone would get sick or worse as a result of taking the vaccine.

I was also afraid about the social ramifications of requiring vaccines. I was afraid that I would never be able to travel again, that the government would come for me one day and force me to take it - I had visions of myself being strapped down or taken away by armed troops.

A reminder that I raise these fears not to argue that they are accurate (or to ask for reaassurance or correction for that matter). My point is not about the reasons for the fear - I think here is where we go off the rails when we hear people express their fears. We try to tell them their instinctive feeling of fear is wrong which not only doesn’t make the fear go away, it can actually strengthen the fear, and it creates even more pressure for those of us in fear to resist. If we try to tell someone their fear is wrong, it may even lead us to overstate our case in ways that are inaccurate that will definitely exacerbate fear and lead to lack of trust in the future.

I will just describe the fear. It was extremely painful. I cried when those I loved got vaccinated. I pressured people to not do it. I felt this need to shout from the rooftops to warn people. And I felt so trapped. I knew that I sounded hysterical or that I would be considered ignorant if I told others what to do. I also knew I wasn’t an expert and so had no medical or viral knowledge to be actually telling people what to do. Yet I also felt like it was immoral for me to stay silent. I felt like it was wrong to let people do what I thought was dangerous. I felt trapped - the reaction of others - and my lack of expertise on what was best for others - made me feel it was wrong for me to speak up but my fear told me it was wrong not to speak up. There seemed to be no right way to speak or act with regard to the situation.

Then there was the exclusion once the public belief was that those who were unvaccinated were a threat. I was no longer invited to some friends’ gatherings. I wasn’t allowed to go to a movie or to a restaurant. During those first months it seemed the first question anyone asked was whether I was vaccinated or not. And since everyone seemed to agree that vaccination was necessary and right, it was fair game to criticize or ridicule people who didn’t. At a small deli I had always frequented I heard customers joke to the owner (in response to his question about whether they were vaccinated) that while they were, their baby wasn’t, and they waved the baby’s arms while they said in a high pitched voice “I’m an antivaxxer” and everyone laughed, which made me feel stupid and like an outcast. A total stranger at the park where I was walking asked my status and then lectured me about how the wrongness of my decision which made me feel both impotent with rage and humiliated by her judgement.

Such exclusions, no matter how well intentioned they may have been, made me feel terrible. I sobbed for days. I crawled into a mental hole. I obsessed over how friends of so many years could seemingly so easily eject me from our group. I felt rejected, unloved, unworthy. I felt as if my exclusion was proof that none of these people ever really cared about me, that this vaccination issue was an excuse for them to finally reject me the way they had wanted to anyways. I felt small. I felt like everyone thought I was stupid and evil. I felt hated. And I extrapolated the current rejection to symbolize an eternity of rejection - that I would continue to be rejected by my society and my friends for the rest of my life.

I also feared that these exclusions would continue to extreme lengths. I know a lot of people got very angry when mandate opponents compared the exclusion of unvaccinated people to the discrimination and hatred against other groups in current and previous times. I am not arguing such comparisons are valid. But I will say that I genuinely felt the fear of such dire machineries of oppression. It was scary to imagine the lengths that we might go to as a society, and my fear of that was debilitating many times. I wanted to move to Mexico or Florida with the many people I knew who did just that in their desire to live somewhere that did things differently than we did in Canada.

And what of other people’s feelings who believed the vaccinations were important and that mandates were right? I still wouldn’t accept the fear people had of the virus. I wouldn’t accept the concern they had for each other and desire they had to prevent suffering of vulnerable friends and family. I ignored the immense relief that many felt at the prospect of effective medication and protection and the wish for a return to normalcy we all had in common. I didn’t appreciate the desire for freedom that the vaccine efforts gave to people. I belittled the trust that people had for those involved with vaccines and other COVID policy.

February 2022 - the Ottawa Convoy

I went to the convoy almost accidentally - I had planned to go skating on the Ottawa canal and my plans dovetailed with the convoy dates.

Part of what drew me to the convoy was my own fears over both the vaccines and the lifestyle I felt our COVID policies were creating. Another part of what drew me was the desire to be around people who accepted and understood me. I was also attracted by the people who were so strong (as I saw it) to stand up meaningfully - to risk their entire livelihoods, to give up jobs and reputations, to give financially - in something they and I believed in so strongly. I felt I saw true integrity, and I was attracted to it. In the midst of the convoy I felt incredible love and communion with the thousands of people who were spending days and nights on end in freezing temperatures in an attempt to be heard.

Upon returning to Toronto I heard the revulsion towards convoy participants and saw the media and government describing a completely different scene than the one I witnessed and participated in. Again I had feelings of fear, anger, claustrophobia and rejection over this difference in viewpoints. I wanted to yell at everyone who thought the convoy was wrong (and did so at least once).

And whose feelings did I ignore or discount? The Ottawa residents who suffered, who couldn’t sleep, who were afraid, whose lives were disrupted by the protests in the downtown. The people who were afraid of what they believed was a grave threat represented by the convoy. I didn’t feel they were entitled to their fear. I thought they should be more accepting. I felt their anger to be unfair and unjustified. I didn’t open my ears and my heart to their genuine concerns. Their pain didn’t matter to me. Only my own pain did.

March 2022 - now

I write as if my pain and confusion are all in the past, but they are not, I continue to question my and others’ attitudes towards COVID19 (along with life, the universe and everything else). Sometimes I feel fear of what’s coming next in our world. Sometimes I feel anger when I start to believe my stories that others are to blame for my pain. But many times I feel joy and gratitude. The joy and the gratitude actually comes when I admit my vulnerability and my fallibility, and allow the possibility that I may not be right. When I’m angry and defensive - in other words when I feel like I’m under attack - I don’t want to let in that possibility. I don’t want to see that I might act in selfish ways sometimes. I don’t want to admit that sometimes I’m “irrational”. But when I can trust in both the love that is within me and within others, and when I can trust that I am, along with everyone else, a divine and amazing product of a universe I don’t understand, I can accept any criticism of myself or my views.

Some relationships over the past two years withstood the test posed by these times and are even stronger as a result. Others weakened - including my relationship with government, health care providers, and the media who I think have permanently broken the trust I had in them (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing - more on that in future essays). Some friendships are over for now. Though I would be happy to have the friends I lost back in my life, I have learned to accept that some people seem to no longer want me - or at least my perspective - in their life. Perhaps my perspective causes them too much pain. Perhaps these were relationships that were meant to change. Perhaps it was my fault and there’s something I should do to repair that I’m not seeing - if you know what that is please let me know! Or perhaps I’ll never understand what truly caused the friendship to end. In life there is so much that we can’t understand, and everytime we accept rather than fight that lack of understanding we create a little more peace.

I hope we can repair or even strengthen the relationships that may still be there for us. That we have people we love dearly who are on the other side of the debate is certain. Comedian Jim Gaffigan said in his most recent show something like “this pandemic showed us that some of our friends were batsh*t crazy” (in his case he was saying the crazy ones were the antivaxxers). Can we put aside such judgements of each other? Or accept that maybe we are all a little batsh*t crazy? If we can, a world of love awaits within us that can withstand anything that the external world throws our way. And once we feel that love, we can share it with everyone around us, no matter what they think.