Steinbach, a little city of 20,000 is usually a tranquil place in Manitoba’s Bible belt.
Usually.
We citizens of Steinbach are proud of our town’s reputation as the cleanest city in North America.[1] We’re known as being the most generous people in Canada.[2] This spring, while the world groaned under the pressures of a pandemic, Steinbach was pleasantly insulated, experiencing super-low numbers of Covid cases. Local headlines read “Zero New Cases” and “One New Case, over 200 Recovered”, lending us a sense of safety and peace even while the world around us was aflame with infection.[3]
Then autumn came, and our reckoning with it.
Locally, Covid began spreading like wildfire until, in November, Steinbach was given another number that set them apart from the nation. We now had “one of the highest infection rates in the country.” [4]
From Bad to Worse
After months of daily Covid counts and ever-changing status of restrictions, people across the nation grew weary of holding their breath to see how the next announcement would torpedo their livelihood, their social life, or even the ability to visit the sick and dying in hospitals.
Across the nation, anxiety, stress, and economic pressure were growing in step with rising Covid cases, and neither showed signs of letting up. As pressure mounted, a sense of discontentment grew and voices of protest began to rise up against the ever-changing, ever-increasing restrictions.
By fall, vocal public protests were reported across the nation in such places as Ontario, BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Quebec. People gathered by the hundreds or even thousands in some cases, to protest the latest restrictions of mask use, citing it as a violation of rights to have to wear it in order to enter places of business. People gathered in large, unmasked groups, defying orders.[5] They paraded in the streets, carrying signs that called for liberty from tyranny, and for the government to get its hands off the citizens’ bodies.[6] They were verbally abusive to mask-wearers.[7]
Steinbach residents, having experienced very little of the pandemic first hand, was quickly thrown into the fray with November’s sky-rocketing Covid case count. Just as elsewhere in the nation, the rise in pressure and restrictions drew out protestors. The crowd was small – a mere 200 according to local news outlets – but their defiance was no less real than their fellow protestors across the nation. They gathered en masse and un-masked. They paraded their vehicles through the streets, honking and holding signs demanding liberty. They held up traffic, preventing citizens from travel. They coughed in the face of police officers who monitored the demonstration. The local protest was shockingly aggressive for the usually safe-and-serene city.
What’s Good About It Is…
In all the chaos, there is some good to be gleaned.
One good may be the chaos itself, and what can be learned from it. I mean much more than learning strategies and protections and rules we can enforce to prevent chaos (who has ever succeeded at preventing chaos?); I mean the deeply personal lessons chaos lays before us.
It Teaches Us Who We Are (or who we could be)
Chaos teaches us about what choices we have and how our choices impact others
and reveal – and maybe even determine – who we are.
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl was a citizen whose most basic rights were removed, right down to the right to work, earn money, own a home, or be considered a human of worth. His deprivation happened not in an isolated hospital room or in a grocery store behind a mask, but working, sleeping, and starving alongside prisoners in a German concentration camp. There, he observed the choices prisoners made – to cling to hope or abandon it – and realized the deprived, lonely, heartbroken prisoners had more freedom than they realized.
“The last of human freedoms,” Frankl said, was the ability “ to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
This lesson is likewise presented to us by our current covid chaos: we get to choose our attitude.
It Infuses Us with Compassion
A second opportunity covid gives us is an up-close front-seat experience of a global crisis, the shock of which has the potential to jolt us awake to our connectedness to others in the world and even infuse us with compassion. Until covid numbers sky-rocketed locally, it was easier to feel safe; immune even. It’s funny how trouble, when it’s growling and clawing at our own front door, can snap us alert and make us suddenly care. Awareness of and compassion for others is a good thing. If suffering is compassion’s delivery method, the unpleasantness does not negate its benefit.
It Jolts Awake our Awareness
A third lesson chaos may be laying before us is a reminder of the importance of kindness and compassion and love, regardless of circumstance. Love is especially to be an identifying mark of the Christian, which is of particular note when people who identify as Christian are also seen making aggressive, derisive, or insulting comments online, are heard complaining and grumbling about government, healthcare, or anyone who disagrees with their point of view.
Judging the vocal and aggressive though, is not the point. The lesson to extract is to observe what choices we all have in this circumstance, and how those choices are affecting people. Is there division? Strife? Increased anger? Increased fear? What good are they, then?
The better course of action is to keep kindness and compassion, wisdom and love close at hand. Now is not the time to lay them down, instead making weapons out of words and mobilizing angry mobs to chant and complain and shake fists. No, now is the time to cling harder than ever to kindness, compassion, wisdom. Without them, we descend into chaos; that’s what this pandemic is teaching us.
What positive things have come out of the pandemic for you?
[1] https://steinbachonline.com/local/southern-manitoba-a-shining-example-of-generosity
[2] https://steinbachonline.com/local/steinbach-again-the-cleanest-city-in-north-america#:~:text=Steinbach%20has%20retained%20its%20title,Steinbach%20is%20the%20executive%20director.
[3] https://steinbachonline.com/local/covid-19-zero-new-cases-more-than-600-tests-performed-in-steinbach
[4] https://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/steinbach-dealing-with-some-of-the-highest-covid-rates-in-canada-1.5185512
[5] https://www.ottawamatters.com/coronavirus-covid-19-national-news/canada-addressing-anti-mask-protests-poses-a-challenge-for-leaders-experts-say-2728498
[6] https://bc.ctvnews.ca/anti-mask-protesters-conspiracy-theorists-march-through-downtown-vancouver-1.5149905
[7] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/anti-mask-protesters-cause-disturbance-and-verbally-abuse-passengers-on-b-c-ferry-1.5766903
After months of daily Covid counts and ever-changing status of restrictions, people across the nation grew weary of holding their breath to see how the next announcement would torpedo their livelihood, their social life, or even the ability to visit the sick and dying in hospitals.
Across the nation, anxiety, stress, and economic pressure were growing in step with rising Covid cases, and neither showed signs of letting up. As pressure mounted, a sense of discontentment grew and voices of protest began to rise up against the ever-changing, ever-increasing restrictions.
By fall, vocal public protests were reported across the nation in such places as Ontario, BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Quebec. People gathered by the hundreds or even thousands in some cases, to protest the latest restrictions of mask use, citing it as a violation of rights to have to wear it in order to enter places of business. People gathered in large, unmasked groups, defying orders.[5] They paraded in the streets, carrying signs that called for liberty from tyranny, and for the government to get its hands off the citizens’ bodies.[6] They were verbally abusive to mask-wearers.[7]
Steinbach residents, having experienced very little of the pandemic first hand, was quickly thrown into the fray with November’s sky-rocketing Covid case count. Just as elsewhere in the nation, the rise in pressure and restrictions drew out protestors. The crowd was small – a mere 200 according to local news outlets – but their defiance was no less real than their fellow protestors across the nation. They gathered en masse and un-masked. They paraded their vehicles through the streets, honking and holding signs demanding liberty. They held up traffic, preventing citizens from travel. They coughed in the face of police officers who monitored the demonstration. The local protest was shockingly aggressive for the usually safe-and-serene city.
What’s Good About It Is…
In all the chaos, there is some good to be gleaned.
One good may be the chaos itself, and what can be learned from it. I mean much more than learning strategies and protections and rules we can enforce to prevent chaos (who has ever succeeded at preventing chaos?); I mean the deeply personal lessons chaos lays before us.
It Teaches Us Who We Are (or who we could be)
Chaos teaches us about what choices we have and how our choices impact others
and reveal – and maybe even determine – who we are.
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl was a citizen whose most basic rights were removed, right down to the right to work, earn money, own a home, or be considered a human of worth. His deprivation happened not in an isolated hospital room or in a grocery store behind a mask, but working, sleeping, and starving alongside prisoners in a German concentration camp. There, he observed the choices prisoners made – to cling to hope or abandon it – and realized the deprived, lonely, heartbroken prisoners had more freedom than they realized.
“The last of human freedoms,” Frankl said, was the ability “ to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
This lesson is likewise presented to us by our current covid chaos: we get to choose our attitude.
It Infuses Us with Compassion
A second opportunity covid gives us is an up-close front-seat experience of a global crisis, the shock of which has the potential to jolt us awake to our connectedness to others in the world and even infuse us with compassion. Until covid numbers sky-rocketed locally, it was easier to feel safe; immune even. It’s funny how trouble, when it’s growling and clawing at our own front door, can snap us alert and make us suddenly care. Awareness of and compassion for others is a good thing. If suffering is compassion’s delivery method, the unpleasantness does not negate its benefit.
It Jolts Awake our Awareness
A third lesson chaos may be laying before us is a reminder of the importance of kindness and compassion and love, regardless of circumstance. Love is especially to be an identifying mark of the Christian, which is of particular note when people who identify as Christian are also seen making aggressive, derisive, or insulting comments online, are heard complaining and grumbling about government, healthcare, or anyone who disagrees with their point of view.
Judging the vocal and aggressive though, is not the point. The lesson to extract is to observe what choices we all have in this circumstance, and how those choices are affecting people. Is there division? Strife? Increased anger? Increased fear? What good are they, then?
The better course of action is to keep kindness and compassion, wisdom and love close at hand. Now is not the time to lay them down, instead making weapons out of words and mobilizing angry mobs to chant and complain and shake fists. No, now is the time to cling harder than ever to kindness, compassion, wisdom. Without them, we descend into chaos; that’s what this pandemic is teaching us.
What positive things have come out of the pandemic for you?
[1] https://steinbachonline.com/local/southern-manitoba-a-shining-example-of-generosity
[2] https://steinbachonline.com/local/steinbach-again-the-cleanest-city-in-north-america#:~:text=Steinbach%20has%20retained%20its%20title,Steinbach%20is%20the%20executive%20director.
[3] https://steinbachonline.com/local/covid-19-zero-new-cases-more-than-600-tests-performed-in-steinbach
[4] https://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/steinbach-dealing-with-some-of-the-highest-covid-rates-in-canada-1.5185512
[5] https://www.ottawamatters.com/coronavirus-covid-19-national-news/canada-addressing-anti-mask-protests-poses-a-challenge-for-leaders-experts-say-2728498
[6] https://bc.ctvnews.ca/anti-mask-protesters-conspiracy-theorists-march-through-downtown-vancouver-1.5149905
[7] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/anti-mask-protesters-cause-disturbance-and-verbally-abuse-passengers-on-b-c-ferry-1.5766903
