Anger part of new normal, but don’t let it take over
Dear Readers: Here’s a relationship issue being brought to attention almost daily by the pandemic: anger.
Knee-jerk reactions and indignant judgment have become common chat among the bored and irritable.
And, no surprise, anger sours social media in these tense times of wondering when our lives can again include camaraderie, family gatherings and outdoor activities.
Anger lives within our new normal and it’s not only natural, it’s useful.
You want to see true anger, watch a video clip of CNN’s Chris Cuomo, a month into his bout with the virus, sweat dripping from his brow, as he attack questioned his brother Andrew, governor of New York.
He asks, doubts, dismisses and scoffs, about how the hell anyone can “open up the economy” — with people going back to work — without the facts of surge, spread and curve of the coronavirus known and understood through adequate numbers of tests for infection.
Hopefully, that anger in enough people in positions to demand change, in Canada as well as the U.S. and other countries, is useful anger.
On the personal level, anger can be cathartic.
So many people are doing their best to protect themselves and their families from getting sick that they persevere in doing what isn’t easy.
They stick to the rules — maybe one walk a day, six feet apart from others, knowing that warmer spring days will be unbearably tempting, that their teenagers will be impossibly restless, that the youngsters will get crankier.
(One pyjama-clad two-year-old who used to be taken to daycare in the morning, now goes to her family’s front door and asks her parents, “Clothes?” In her confusion, she too, is upset.)
Hard to bear.
Yet bear it we must, and ranting angrily at each other and/or over small stuff just makes it tougher.
Here’s what one person wrote me in an email exchange, after he vented about something I wrote for which I corrected myself, explained plus apologized for it.
The response I received: “I’m terribly sorry for the accusatory and hurtful way I wrote to you. I’d never have spoken to anyone like that in real life … I have never liked the version of myself that exists online.”
That person showed me the best and worst of what social media can reveal. The frustration of the times and the anonymity of the writer allowed venom to rise to the top.
Good for him for taking ownership of unnecessary, wasted anger.
Especially when so many people carry unremitting anger, having learned the awful truth of how their elderly and/or disabled relatives suffered and died in some long-term-care and nursing homes where COVID-19 raged due to inadequate care, equipment and staff to fight it.
Whether it’s sooner or later, we’ll all have to adapt again to a “new-normalplus,” when medical/public health officials, scientists and political leaders decide is the right time for trying to “open up” for business.
Maybe seniors will have longer stayhome orders — frustrating but perhaps essential to avoiding more deaths.
Maybe “groups” will still have to be kept to a number that can be spaced — not hundreds jammed in a sports stadium to keep the money flowing — and not risk exposing us again to the virus explosion that occurred after meetings, conferences and March-break beach parties were held in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Maybe we’ll have learned that anger alone isn’t solving the virus crisis.
Ellie’s tip of the day
Save your energy for staying well and managing through stay-home orders until the time for change is as safe and informed as possible. Ellie Tesher is an advice columnist for the Star and based in Toronto. Send your relationship questions via email: ellie@thestar.ca.
You want to see true anger, watch a video clip of CNN’s Chris Cuomo, a month into his bout with the virus