WE WILL FLOURISH ONCE AGAIN by Rector Chris Girata

WE WILL FLOURISH ONCE AGAIN was published in the Katy Trail Weekly, "The Good Word" Column, May 21, 2021
Chris Girata is the Rector of Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Dallas, TX.

"I met a friend for coffee a few weeks ago, in-person, sitting in a café, just like normal people (I’m still excited about these little pleasures given how much we missed during quarantine). As we sat and talked, I was keenly aware of his frustration at his job. Things were ok. Not bad, not great, just ok, and that didn’t seem to do anything for him. Even though he wasn’t tired, he described feeling empty and didn’t have the energy he had before the pandemic. I listened and commiserated but was left uncertain about what to do to help him.

Later that week, I read an Adam Grant’s article in The New York Times on the mental state of languishing: There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing. Grant describes languishing as “a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield.” In a few simple sentences, he captured the feeling my friend had been trying to convey.

But the pandemic offered us all an opportunity to reimagine who we are and the way we live.

Thankfully, the pandemic is passing us by. It’s not quite in the rearview mirror yet, but it’s almost there. Yet many of us are feeling the lasting impacts of a year in which our collective attention was spent on a constant hum of fear. All around us, our world seemed to be changing daily, sometimes even hourly. New information came out all the time about whether to wear masks and how, then the promise of a vaccine and the lines to receive it. As if that wasn’t enough, our social order flared to spotlight inequalities and disagreements that haven’t been seen in decades. It’s enough to exhaust anyone.

Now that we’re sliding through 2021, it’s apparent that long-haul covid isn’t the only lasting impact of the disease. The problem of languish is sticking with us. Falling somewhere between depression and flourishing, languishing is an altogether third way of describing macro mental health. Languishing is “the void between depression and flourishing—the absence of well-being. You don’t have symptoms of mental illness, but you’re not the picture of mental health either.” If you’re feeling short of 100 percent, but definitely not depressed, you’re not alone.

We have all had to change the way we live, and those changes continue. Procedures and protocols have shifted countless times. Just when we know how to meet one set of expectations, those expectations change. After the CDC’s announcement that mask wearing is no longer recommended for full vaccinated people, shock waves were sent in all directions, unsettling us once again.

I bet that each of you can find a hopeful shift in your own life that has made life a bit richer.

After all this change, it’s no wonder that we are beyond tired. That languishing feeling we share doesn’t feel good, but perhaps it’s not all that bad. Rather than being frustrated or annoyed by the languish, perhaps we can accept that we have a limit to how much change we can take. So much has been written about how our world will be different after the pandemic that it can overwhelm us even more. Staying in the land of languish might be just what we need in order to wait out the remaining shifts that are inevitably on their way.

Just remember that although languishing is not bad in itself, I do hope that we will not stay there. Our world is good, and people are, deep down, hopeful beings. The stress and anxiety of the last 15 months will not remain forever. Hang on, keep moving forward, and together we will find a way to flourish once again.

"The Good Word" Column is published bi-weekly, and can be picked up at the Saint Michael South Entrance.