Â鶹Éç

Available for over a year

Good Morning. As we reach the one year anniversary of COVID 19 in Europe, stories of those who have been on the frontline in our hospitals are emerging. One is of a nurse from the Lewisham Hospital in South London, who shared with Â鶹Éç news that she felt guilt every day when she went home, guilt because of those who could not be saved. She said, ‘You feel you haven’t done anything even though you’ve done everything’. This nurse and indeed other health workers are not the only ones to feel guilty at this time. Parents are struggling to home-school their children whilst trying to run businesses from the dining room table, fearing that they are failing both. Those with relatives in care homes imagine the loneliness of their dear ones in spite of Zoom and Skype and feel inadequate. Then there are those who feel guilty that they can’t do more, because their age keeps them at home, preventing them from volunteering in food banks or other frontline services. This leads to a division between those who are rushed off their feet but feel that they should be giving more and those who see the stay-at-home message as stripping them of their ability to contribute. And guilt may attach to each. Guilt of this kind often stems from our empathy and our love, from the capacity of our hearts to feel for the suffering of others. It has nothing to do with our own inadequacies, although our minds trick us into thinking it has. Forms of religion that continually stress our human inadequacy or our sin don’t help here. Certainly, faiths such as Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism stress that there is something wrong with humanity in terms of our selfishness. Yet, they also warn of the dangers of being so hard on ourselves that we lose sight of the good we are capable of doing. Ringing through the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are the words, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ – implying the importance of kindness to self. And in Buddhism, a very popular meditation on loving kindness begins with self. I’ve used it often. First, I surround myself with loving kindness, saying ‘May I be well. May I be happy’. Only then do I move to surrounding others with loving kindness until I reach those whom I find it difficult to like, still saying ‘May you be well. May you be happy’. As an antidote to guilt or to feelings that we are inadequate, perhaps a dose of loving kindness and compassion towards ourselves is necessary, now more than ever.