We must put more focus on spirituality

Over the past year, it seems that our inner lives have gone by the wayside

Very few of us could have predicted that COVID -19 would still be around a year after its arrival on our shores. That's not surprising. None of us had ever lived through a pandemic of this magnitude.

Some still don't believe it exists.

In the past year, we've gained a new vocabulary: cluster, hot zones, community spread, contact tracing, convalescent plasma, herd immunity, negative pressure, superspreader, variant, and many other medically inspired expressions.

It has been a year during which most of us who obeyed the rules did not see our loved ones. A year during which many Canadians lost their steady source of income. A year during which parents were at their wit's end trying to figure out the latest school policies. A year of that dastardly Zoom.

A year during which millions of people around the globe mourned the loss of a loved one. This is also the year when we discovered just how little the elderly count in our society.

A year of boredom and sameness, of anger at politicians for all the right and the wrong reasons, at people who don't respect the rules and of daily medical reporting that seemed at times to go off in all directions. A year of confusion and fear.

A year of insane conspiracy theories believed by people who are not technically insane.

But there is one thing we spoke relatively little about during this year: our spiritual life.

I don't mean religion. I'm not talking about eternal life, but internal life. Some people call it the soul. Some call it the mind. For others, it is art, yoga, meditation, values, gratitude, nature. It's a connection to a higher power. Whichever words we choose to describe our inner life, or spirituality, it appears to me to have gone by the wayside at a time when we need it most.

Spirituality helps us deal with reality.

The Oxford University Journal of Public Health published an article last October noting that “spirituality serves a critical purpose in a person's well-being.” It goes on to point out that spiritual care forms part of the human psyche, a care that includes empathy and compassion, not only for the ill, but also their loved ones. Spirituality is concentrated human love in its most basic form. Love with intent to heal oneself and others.

The past couple of decades have brought us the self-help movement, the Oprahesque “live your best life,” a monumental fraud, in my view. It's easy to live well in a $50-million home. We can follow Oprah's advice, but how many of us will achieve her level of success and wealth?

Spirituality is introspection, connection, transcendence, for which we have plenty of time these days. It is thinking seriously about right and wrong to help us adjust our inner compass, to act as if all living beings and things matter.

People I know who live spiritual lives tend to be happier, even in times of trouble. God only knows why it works, but it works.