Grateful for a Good Palaver – as published in the Rocky Mountain Outlook, August 5, 2021
Last week, the word “Palaver” arrived in my email feed as my “Word of the Day”. I clicked the link to the Merriam-Webster source, and the back-room word smart experts reminded me that the definition of palaver is: “a long parley usually between persons of different cultures or levels of sophistication; a discussion; idle talk.”
That single word, palaver, reminded me of one special friend. I hadn’t seen her since pre-COVID, so I sent her a text, asking if she was available for a chinwag. Happily, we quickly found a convenient date and time and place for a wonderfully relaxed face-to-face conversation. Meeting a friend on an outdoor patio on any Friday in summer is a privilege that we can now savour more fully. Sharing a table and speaking with someone while looking them in the eye, noting their hands, the timbre in the voice, and the nuances that a rich a tête-à-tête delivers. I love summer chats that are such a relaxing and humanizing activity.
As our banter skipped from the realities of life, we talked about choices and changes, we celebrated the news that Banff’s mayor has accepted her appointment to the Senate and we wrinkled our brows over the lightning strikes created by social media. She listened as I talked about my gratitude project, my book, about my year of reading and learning, and we collectively mused about summer, travel plans, our health and well-being.
At one point in the story, she mentioned an online article that she had book-marked for future reading. She mentioned its angle and we agreed with each other that COVID-19 poses threats to our friendships, to the words “common good” and to our public institutions – hospitals, schools, governments and beyond.
I then blurted, “Don’t invest your precious time reading that article. Forget it,” and recommended that she read articles that offer reasons to be grateful for COVID. I talked about my online learning related to the Science of Wellbeing and positive psychology and the idea that we need to read more positivity and constructive journalism rather than allowing so much negativity to invade our lives.
Meeting a friend who is emotionally intelligent, thoughtful, has a generous soul and is interested in life beyond the narrows, energizes me tremendously. I continued to think about our wide-ranging conversation and chuckled when I saw the 3 X 5 index card sitting on my desk. It reads: “Laurie Santos. Science of Well-being. Evidence Based. Top 5 Coping Tips:
- Exercise
- Gratitude
- Sleep
- Get Social
- RAIN: Recognize the something. Acknowledge it. Investigate it. Nurture it. Sit with it. Repeat.”
Simple advice from the experts that is so simple, powerful and validating. Putting it all together: When things are going sideways and you need a healthy jolt, get some exercise. Go for a walk. Come home and make a list of reasons to feel grateful. Get some sleep. Be sociable – call a friend, talk to a stranger, have a palaver. If negativity continues to fester, sit down, and write your RAIN out and repeat steps 1 – 4.
By switching to life in a social, physical, real time, actual place, by grounding yourself in the here and now, you can disconnect from the speculative, highly charged virtual spaces of anonymity. In the company of others, we can see more clearly our positives, negatives and possibilities. We can also hear how silly some of our ideas sound, when they reach the ears of a gentle listener.
Social media puts a powerful and dangerous dragon into our pockets. Every dragon slayer needs tools and coping skills for rugged travel. Living in an online world is numbing, insulating, disconnecting, inflammatory and isolating. I say: muzzle the dragon. Turn off your phone and go for a good palaver, and for our parched earth in summer 2021, we must embrace and acknowledge the importance of a RAIN.
