By Pastor Rhoda Klein Miller
Omicron has given us a dramatic illustration of the power of an invisible contagion. This slippery little virus has spread through our neighborhoods, provinces and countries like wildfire. Some health professions say exposure is inevitable so your body has either successfully fought it or you are recovering from it.
Perhaps one of its overlooked detriments is that it has spurred alongside its other contagions – more specifically social contagions. The APA dictionary defines a social contagion as the spread of behaviors and attitudes through crowds and social aggregates. In health research this is demonstrated by a stronger likelihood you’ll eat a plant-based diet depending on how many of your social contacts eat plant-based. And not only your direct or close contacts play into this influence but the connections your friends and family have – who you may never have met – are a significant factor in what actions and feelings you adopt.
Studies have shown that when non-lonely people hang out with lonely people they have a high tendency to become lonely themselves. Thankfully happiness is contagious too. So if you’re a caregiver or live with someone who is down, one of the important self-care practices is to ensure you have twice as many positive contacts because of this human trait to mimic the people we are most exposed to. These “mirror neurons” in our brains are evidenced when we notice we feel uplifted just by looking at pictures of smiling people, or creatures.
This really makes me think about the ways I am affected by and affect others. Do my daily interactions have a sum positive or negative impact? Because we are wearing masks for most of our face-to-face encounters, I’ve made a more intentional effort to say a cheery ‘hello’ or ‘nice to see you’ to emphasise my hidden smile. And most importantly to curate the inputs I have control over and counter the sorrowed and painful interactions by spending more time with the greatest source of joy, peace and love I know – Jesus. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4