It’s cold and flu season. We keep hearing that, especially if we watch any TV at all.
And of course, we’re coming off two plus years of pandemic talk where we were hypervigilant about contagion. Oh, and there are new disease concerns coming up and focus on how they are spread.
Cold and flu are contagious. Many diseases are contagious. So we wash our hands, toss our tissues, cover our mouths when we cough and adopt other behaviors to limit the contagion. Let’s just set aside the talk about eating dirt to bolster our immune system, okay? Bottom line, we tend to focus on ways to prevent contagion.
The word “contagion” is predominantly used in a negative context – spreading disease, harmful ideas or practices.
The basic model of contagion is spreading something through person to person contact; one person infecting another or others with something they have. I want to look at the model of contagion in a slightly different light. Let’s give it another color. There are other things that are contagious or infectious right? Like yawning – which is pretty neutral. Yawning can spread from person to person.
And there are a myriad of other things, like:
- Laughter
- Smiling
- Kindness
- Hope
- Generosity
- Gratitude
- Forgiveness
- Purpose
Maybe we don’t want to contain these infectious things. Maybe we want to encourage the spread and increase the person to person contact.
Look, I sure don’t want to have a cold or flu because they’re miserable. But I am intentionally interested in spreading things from the myriad list above. I think that’s part of what I need to continue to recover from pandemic mindset.
We’re contagious. We just are. And some things are worth spreading.
In the meantime, remember these things: You are loved. We are all loved. Let’s all be kind. And in all things – progress, not perfection!
Maggie