Gratitude, at a Difficult Moment.
Gratitude, at a Difficult Moment
Even amid challenge, we have much for which to be thankful.
One of the joys of being in a university is how closely our calendar reflects the rhythm of the seasons, with each change in weather ushering in a new feature of the academic year. Late summer/early fall means reconnecting with friends and colleagues and welcoming new students. Winter means the holidays and time with loved ones before returning for the next semester. Spring means celebrating our graduating class and looking ahead to summer. We now are at the time of year when we anticipate Thanksgiving, a pause before we return to wrap-up the semester, a time to reflect with gratitude on all we have, all we are privileged to do. It is a familiar time and one I have long seen as a chance to take stock of the moment before the bustle of the semester’s end. I came to truly appreciate Thanksgiving relatively late in life, when, at 30, I immigrated to the US. Perhaps this belated appreciation helped sharpen Thanksgiving’s significance to me, making it a holiday to which I look forward and treasure every year.
Even as we look forward to Thanksgiving, it is important to acknowledge that, this year, the familiarity of routine has given way to an unprecedented moment. The pandemic disrupted the rhythms that have long helped structure our lives, forcing us to adapt to a new normal. As we have done so, we have struggled with the anxiety that comes with living at such a moment, and the grief that accompanies the loss of friends, colleagues, and loved ones. This grief colors all we did during the pandemic and gives added poignancy to the coming holiday. As we look ahead, we also mourn and remember. We cannot give thanks for what we have without first acknowledging what we have lost.
This loss speaks to the hard reality of what we have experienced. It has been a difficult year. We have been through much—personally, and as members of a community. As a country, we lost hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens and weathered lockdowns, travel restrictions, and lost time with loved ones. The pandemic upended everything, leaving few parts of our lives untouched. While the emergence of vaccines now lets us look to a post-pandemic future, we are not yet past this moment. The virus continues to affect many, as do the mitigation measures we have embraced in response to the crisis. All this reflects a time which will likely echo throughout the rest of our lives, and rightly so. We should never forget the tragedy of the last 20 months.
At the same time, we have much for which to be thankful. It is often through the experience of challenge that we more clearly see the many causes we have for gratitude. Through adversity, we discover what sustains us during hard times, and how central community is to resilience in the face of difficulty. We are fortunate indeed to have the privilege of being part of a purpose-driven group of people dedicated to building a healthier world. We work each day at the intersection of ideas and their pragmatic application to the pursuit of health. This year, we reflected on this work as part of our 45th anniversary, which culminated last week at our Anniversary Celebration, where we came together to mark where we have been and to look forward to where we will go next.
When I think about gratitude in the context of the COVID moment, I find a key theme emerges: people. For all we do as a community—all our research, teaching, and practice—our core strength is that we are a collection of people dedicated to the work of public health. Our work is likewise meant to create a better world for people, for the populations we serve. It is this collective effort on behalf of the common good that is at the heart of all we do. Together, we are part of a community working toward something that is bigger than ourselves. This sense of shared purpose is something for which to be thankful indeed. As we look ahead to the final months of 2021 and the start of a new year, we can do so from a place of optimism—the theme of SPH This Year 2021—buoyed by all we have done to advance our mission over the last 20 months, as we rose to the occasion at a difficult moment.
I hope everyone has a terrific Thanksgiving.
Warm regards,
Sandro
Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH
Dean and Robert A. Knox Professor
Boston University School of Public Health
Twitter: @sandrogalea
