When You Ain't Got That Swing

CoVID-19 Day 25

I had an extended Twitter conversation this morning (much longer than usual) with someone I’ve been following for a while and whom I tend to agree with on most things political. Where we’ve diverged is on who we supported in Labour’s leadership election. There wasn’t a great divide in the elections as many members weren’t particularly energised — none of the candidates were very compelling.

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A pendulum must swing its full arc before returning to the normal
so must we experience the extent of our grief or disappointment
sometimes before making a constructive journey
back to the point of equilibrium

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With so many people calling for Labour’s first female leader (though Harriet Harman stood as interim leader after Ed Milliband resigned) I’ve been surprised that so many women voted for Kier when there were 2 women leadership candidates. This Twitterer voted for Kier Starmer who she felt would be the most electable when it came to a general election. I had certain reservations about him and voted Rebecca Long Bailey.

Although a Starmer leadership was pretty much on the cards it still came as a hammer blow when he won the ballot, for many Corbyn followers. It wasn’t just about Kier it was grief over saying goodbye to the leader we’d pinned all our hopes on. However many Corbyn supporters voted for Kier and some with enthusiasm (though I never understood why). The tweet I initally responded to was one she’d liked. He was disappointed that there had been so much negativity and I was trying to explain why that was.

I wasn’t being concilliatory but neither was I being intentionally confrontational. I was merely justifying the anger and trying to explain that you can’t simply dismiss someone’s behaviour because you have difficulty accepting it. One argument was that there was a crisis out there with people dying, so why were we crying over spilt milk. But when tempers are short it serves no purpose to point out the illogic or inappropriateness of someone else’s feelings unless you are actually in a live situation where immediate focus is critical.

There are times when its necessary to behave irrationally so you can work through your feelings. A pendulum must swing its full arc before returning to the normal so must we experience the extent of our grief or disappointment sometimes before making a constructive journey back to the point of equilibrium. I am not the best me when I make sacrifices unwillingly unless I can rationalise why I’m doing it. And in that case I am using my negative inertia to power my positive movement. You will make best use of your enemy when you harness their energy. When it dissipates its lost.

We so often fail to undertsand grief because we don’t grasp the fundamental nature of it. Its a way of coping with loss but it isn’t reserved for when someone dies. You can mourn for all manner of losses including losing the hope that your child will ever marry or live the kind of life you imagined for them. Its selfish but its not invalid even when another thinks of it as trivial. A child can mourn the loss of their favourite toy and its as real as your grief even though its consequences are not profound.

There’s a grief in isolation, in not being able to enjoy your usual activities and pleasures. Its the stuff of life and yet we don’t recognise it most of the time because our coping mechanisms are so practiced. Its situations like this when you have to face losses that are strange and unfamilar. You have to remember that you are not being punished (because depravation is used as a punishment) or you have to accept that it can be a gift (even when its a punishment). It has echoes of the past where child motality rates were such that a young death in the family was almost inevtiable. “God giveth and God taketh away” was not simply a theological truth rattled out at a funeral, its was an understanding because everyone knew it first hand.

The deaths we are experiencing due to CoVID-19 are not normal but with it come the removal of the props that separate us from life’s normal cycle. We generally live in a world unequipped to deal with nature’s capricious stealth but sometimes its good to find ourselves in an armlock, battling forces we wouldn’t normally engage with. In these times we need to give ouselves and others a little more grace and take a little less umbrage.