Save the anger for the man who put us in this position - Boris | Verity Lush

Do not get cross with teachers for schools not opening – Boris has stolen your child’s education. Do not get cross with a virus for hospitals not being able to offer routine surgery or cancer treatments – Boris has stolen our health and he ruined the NHS before Covid by refusing to fund it.

Johnson and his arrogant refusal to listen throughout January and February and most of March, has stolen time with our loved ones, time for freedom, and our liberties. Get cross with Boris. Unite.

A toxic mess of hostility

So much of the world is grieving at the moment, for so many lost liberties.

Some of us are grieving for our loved ones, the greatest loss of all.

Others are experiencing a different kind of grief, but still grief.

It is grief for their lost GCSEs, the culmination of 12 years of schooling, dashed at the final hurdle.

We cannot even reach out for the arms of loved ones to comfort us. Social media has become a toxic hot mess of hostility, with all of us judging, sometimes wrongly and sometimes rightly.

We lose perspective in our Boris bubbles and need the dilution of being out in society with friends and support.

Never in our lifetimes has there been a year like the one that 2020 is currently shaping up to be.

We are trapped behind glass, peering out at it, with little but a device to bang away on and social media to live through.

I think most of us are guilty of this and probably need to take a step back – me as much as the next person.

At the present time, we are all grieving for something, and we have more time than ever to consider all of our regrets.

How will we live after this is over?

How will we live during it?

Do you care enough about the shops opening to bother rushing there or have your priorities changed?

I may take a break from social media.

It’s too easy to see things you don’t like, or to post things that you wish you never had, or see other people do similar.

Some forgiveness is in order.

We are all grieving, and that’s not the best position from which to make decisions.

People are dying – whether through racist or non-racist attacks, or Covid-19, or illness, leaving loved ones, whose grief is going to affect their lives forever onwards.

And grief does not leave you.

It is not linear, but sweeps through your life in waves, knocking you flat and pulling you out with the rip tide, before settling you back down on shore again.

We all need to remember that.

If we listen and learn there is hope of something better

So often in life we see a massive outpouring one minute, nothing the next.

But hopefully, this time, a death will not be in vain, and a positive difference will be made to the world. All of us are learning, certainly me as much as anyone else.

Many companies – both local and international – are publicly apologising for their own lack of education and mistakes in what they have put online, holding their hands up and admitting that they too are learning. This is an admirable admission.

We all blunder but if we listen, and learn, we can hope for real change.

We need to be forgiving of ourselves, and others, and admit that we might not get it right but we are evolving. Hopefully to something better.