“There’s no glory in prevention.”
I feel there should also be a more personal version of this saying. Something describing situations where you go through hard times yourself but somehow emerge unharmed. With unharmed I don’t mean that there is no suffering or pain. With unharmed I mean not broken, your sense of self-worth intact, your relationships whole or even improved.
There’s no glory in getting through hard times unharmed. Like in disease prevention there’s a strong tendency to take the positive outcome as granted. To fail to appreciate what made this outcome possible.
There are several examples of this in my life. For now, I want to focus on the COVID pandemic. During March 2020 life changed. Home confinement, constant fear of getting infected, social contacts coming to a minimum. A situation which lasted in a more or less severe way for more than a year when vaccinations started turning the table for humanity. It was a time of uncertainty and fear and increased social isolation.
Foremost, I need to say that my situation during that time was very privileged and comfortable in a lot of ways. No severe cases of infection of people close to me or myself, safe income situation, health insurance, 50m² apartment for two persons. The story would be probably be very different in any other circumstances.
Looking back at it now, there’s no sense of having missed out on much (although that seemed very different at the time). But more importantly, there was no feeling of being alone, fights in your home, going crazy without the usual distractions. So what helped me through this time? It was foremost a loving husband with which I lived together for nearly all of that time. It was keeping in touch with my closest friends (also video calls that had this special COVID feel about them that was quite unique). It was going for a walk with a friend and getting drunk (trying our best to replace hanging out at bars and clubs with watching the sun set over half empty city landscapes).
I never felt lonely because of that. Never felt the social isolation hit quite that hard. Never felt fear and uncertainty overwhelm. Connection and community (two makes a crowd) are essential to make you get through hard times unharmed. It is something easy to forget but whenever the next hard times hit these are going to be your best line of support again.