The Stages Of Grief For Celebrations

One of the first college classes I took was Intro to Psychology.  It's the kind of basic class you want to take if you have an undeclared major or an elective to fill, which is probably why it was mainly filled with freshmen and seniors.

It was an easy class, generally only requiring memorization for success, but it's surprising how much of it I still remember.  One of those things is the psychological stages of grief:  Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.

[Technically, these were identified by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross as the stages of grief for the terminally ill in her book On Death and Dying (yes, I even remember that!) but over time they've been attributed to more than just terminal illness.]

I've often applied these stages of grief to other things.  I once did an entire presentation to a large group about the years-long need for additional financing for a project, and I used the stages of grief as a simile of sorts.  I suggested that in the past year, some in the room had moved from denial to anger to bargaining, but most hadn't yet made it to depression much less acceptance.  So I told them I was taking it upon myself to depress them that day as much as possible so they'd get to acceptance faster.

Recently, I've been applying the stages of grief to how people are treating aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic.  For example, we've got an executive branch of federal government that denied it, then got angry as it happened, and is so corrupt that it will never get beyond bargaining over it while people die.

However, it's particularly applicable to those who have/had planned gatherings of many people, whether it be graduation parties, baby showers, or weddings.  First, there's a denial that the event can't happen.  Then anger about how a rare pandemic could get in the way.  Then there's the stage most are in, which is bargaining for a way to still make the event happen against needlessly exposing guests to the virus.  Of course, this also includes bargaining with vendors over monetary deposits that may have been made.

Not everyone has managed to get through to the depression stage, and then ultimate acceptance that the event either isn't going to happen, or won't be happening anywhere close to the original plan.  And not all of those who've managed to make it to acceptance are done; those proceeding with alternate plans are finding themselves right back at denial when those revised arrangements are also partly stymied.

It's a terrible year to have planned for any type of celebration, much less to try to execute said celebration.  I'm glad I'm not in that group, but if I was, I'd try to get through the stages of grief as soon as possible.

Two Things At Once

If I had to wager on it, I would have bet a lot on something related to the COVID-19 pandemic as the top story on non-conspiracy news outlets for many more weeks / months.  Only some huge natural disaster or mass killing event could possibly keep that from happening.

It's a bet I would have quickly lost.

All it took was a video of a bad Minneapolis cop slowly killing an already-detained black man by choking off his airway.  Now we have protests and quasi-riots across America, bringing attention to both overt and covert criminal racial discrimination that still exists after 250 years.  (This is made even worse by having a mentally-ill U.S. president stirring the pot with his own versions of racism and divisive rhetoric.  Apparently, calling a pandemic a hoax for weeks hasn't killed enough people already.)

As has been the norm over the past few years, people are turning this into a combative, binary decision.  That is, you either support the Black Lives Matter movement, or you support the police.  This is incredibly stupid, because both things are possible!

Human beings can support two things (even more!) at the same time, even when those things seem to be opposites.  Here, we have to support persons or color in their quest to be treated equally under the law, while at the same time supporting appropriate enforcement of those laws.

We're doing it now in an even larger way, as we battle a once in a lifetime pandemic with differing views on how that should be done.  For example, it's OK to support wearing a mask and still support opening the economy.

But again, some want to frame all national decisions as a binary, political win/lose.  It's dumb and counterproductive to look at everything through such a political lens.  Unfortunately, that's what our current, leadership-less executive branch has been perpetuating,

Since we have a leadership void at the federal level, the only way to peacefully accomplish any of our collective goals is from the bottom-up.  People must ignore the extremists, be responsible for taking care of others, and remember to vote out the unqualified, arrogant, complicit, idiots who've been in charge for the past few years.