I’m Going to Have to Ask You to Not Silver Lining This
I’m Going to Have to Ask You to Not Silver Lining This
During my first post- vaccine trip away, I heard a few people talking about their positive experiences of the pandemic. One said, joyously, “There’s really a silver lining to all this!” I think she was talking about having time in her garden or space to be with her family but I can’t remember because my brain melted down in that moment. I don’t mean to imply that someone couldn’t have positive experiences of the pandemic or experience things as a silver lining. I don’t even mean to suggest that one can’t talk about the positive aspects one might have enjoyed.
But it might be important to keep in mind that everyone has had every different pandemics and there are a lot of people for whom there was no silver lining or there is no silver lining and there is unlikely to be a silver lining before this is over over over.
As things start opening back up and people start to touch back in with one another, it might be worth being a little careful when talking about the great times you’ve had this last year and a half.
I’m super glad that not everyone was traumatized by the traumatizing event we all just went through. I’m glad folks had gardens and space to stretch out in. I’m glad people enjoyed Zoom cocktail hours and on-line exercise classes. I’m glad that for some folks this whole thing was mostly just a little inconvenient and not that big a deal.
But that’s not the case for a lot of people. For people who got sick or lost someone to COVID, for people who lost their jobs or their field or their hope, for people confined to small spaces or in unsafe conditions, a silver lining is just not in the cards, particularly when they’re still dealing with the repercussions of the storm clouds. This thing sucked for me. And it sucked much more for a whole lot of other people. The silver lining is that we survived. I honestly don’t want to hear about any other silver linings. I don’t want to hear the positive spins and I categorically do not want to be asked to make a positive spin.
No one here in NYC is really doing that. I think, as a city, we’ve still got after-images of those morgue trucks parked outside our hospitals burned into our neurons so we’re just not inclined to try and put a positive spin on anything. With the possible exception of the city administration. They’re trying to do that hard. But for the people who live here? It feels like everyone just assumes that we’ve been through hell and we’re not really going to talk about it for a while.
But elsewhere, where maybe the realities of this pandemic weren’t quite as up close and personal, there’s a classic American attempt at turning of that frown upside down happening. And smiling is a good idea! For sure! But I beg of you, please, unless you know for a fact someone had a really easy time of it this last year or so, don’t go looking for the silver lining. There may not really be one for the person you’re talking to.
Most people who have a yacht have at least a cursory awareness that not everyone has access to a yacht and so the nicest ones don’t tend to go on about it. The clueless, of course, will not shut up about the yacht’s amenities but the nice ones will not bother non-yacht people with their yacht stories. Think about your silver lining like a yacht. If you find another person you know for a fact has a yacht, please enjoy all the yacht talk you want — but if you’re talking with a non-yacht owner, maybe talk about the weather instead. And maybe just start with the assumption that the person you’re talking to does not own a yacht.
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Originally published at http://artiststruggle.wordpress.com on July 21, 2021.
