Over-dosing on coronavirus briefings but finding some cautious hope buried within.

One thing I will not miss when this pandemic finally fades away is coronavirus news briefings on the BBC.  I wonder if I am the only one who has a very conflicted relationship with the government's announcements.  On the one hand I feel almost compelled to watch them as I want to know the practicalities.  I wonder if I am trying to gain a sense of being informed and "in control" among the chaos. But at the same time, I am usually emotionally overwhelmed by the end of these coronavirus updates and fairly grumpy with just about everything.  

It is sadly clear that things are bad right now in terms of coronavirus infection levels with our hospitals at breaking point.  After listening to Chris Whitty (Chief Medical Officer for England) and other medical doctors who are dealing with this "peak", it is sobering and deeply upsetting.  I swing from being tearful, to anger to feeling overwhelmed.  "Why did we wait AGAIN for so long until we properly locked down?' and "why won't everyone follow the rules?" I ask as I grump around the house.  Why have we still not learned the lessons from successful countries, such as Australia where they lockdown as soon as they have a small cluster of cases and NOT when we are drowning in 60,000 cases a day?  Is it too little too late, once again I hear myself sigh.

Maybe we are also unlucky in the emergence of the new variant?  My picturesque seaside town is right in the heart of the south of England experiencing high levels of this new strain.  I now feel more unsettled out on my daily walks, as I did way back last spring.   The beach areas are still quite busy, and it is difficult to avoid passing a number of walkers when out.  I am walking away from the pretty coast, along lesser known tracks and this feels better.  But I find myself feeling irritable once again with people not giving social distance, or not saying thank you when I've waited yet again, or talking loudly on their mobile phone.   This is my only time out in nature each day, where I normally feel restored and happy.  Instead, I feel like some angry lion and I wonder where my calm has gone?

Apart from all the genuine concerns of this alarming and distressing second "peak" that we are in, I might have also over-dosed on the coronavirus briefings and updates.  Being a "highly-sensitive person", I can't just watch or read something without having many emotional reactions.  So if I have watched or read snippets of information three of four times a day, it is like for me having four double espressos in a day.  And I can't tolerate any caffeine let alone a double shot.  Psychologist Dr Meg Arroll has written about how our bodies need to have a rest from the emotional challenges and news about the pandemic.  Even though this is probably obvious and I have written about it before, I keep slipping back into checking updates too often.

"Just as we wouldn’t exercise hour after hour without a break, we shouldn’t expend emotional energy without respite. Therefore, we must give our emotional muscles rest too so that they can repair, by first becoming more aware of all the emotional work we do on a daily basis, including consuming the news.”

Meanwhile, as our country grapples with this rapid rise in cases once again, attention has also turned endlessly to "the vaccine".  It seems right surely to bring in positive news among such a stark situation here?  But my struggle is with this seemingly blind optimism that our Prime Minister continues to spout, even though after each overly optimistic claim, he has been proved entirely wrong.  When he confidently said things were going to be better by November, we were in our second lockdown.  By Christmas we were due some kind of normality, when for many of us our celebrations were home alone.  So when I hear the most recent claim that by "the spring" things will be much better, I daren't get my hopes up. 

But it is not that I lack hope.  I have plenty of hope tucked away, deep down beneath the reality of living each day through this difficult part of the pandemic.  My hope doesn't have a time frame, even though my mind desperately wants to know when things will improve by?  My hope is a more rugged kind of faith that difficult times do come to an end, even when they feel like they are going on forever.  Hope to me says that life goes in cycles, that this kind of pandemic "winter" of hibernation and reducing our lives down to a few square miles will end.  A "spring" will follow, it is the natural order of things and re-growth is ahead.  There will be a flourishing again.  

But you can't rush or wish a winter away.  It just slowly eases and transforms in its own time into the next season.  It is difficult to live both in the harsh pandemic season of now and also be bouncy and optimistic about the vaccine and what this will bring in the unknown future.  When it is time, the end will slowly come to this pandemic.  My hope is understandably more cautious.  It says that there will be more ups and downs ahead before the end is reached.  But if we can stay steady and ride out the waves it will be worth the journey.  Something will have grown within us, that will emerge for the good of both ourselves and the planet we are part of.  That I hope for sure.  

My kind of cautious hope was echoed by Barack Obama, talking recently about his new book and his hope for America, which he calls "cautious optimism".  For both the worldwide pandemic and for the US democracy under great stress, these are wise words:

"Hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. 

Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it" (Barack Obama)