Brightening up our Covidal life

In proclaiming a Colour of the Year, Dulux designers annually put a specific message out there: This is what we envision for the year to come; the atmosphere we would like to create; our proposal for being. In choosing Bright Skies for 2022, those designers reveal the collective yearning felt in the world today: let’s have a bit of brightness, please, in our dreary Covidal life.

And no, Covidal is not a word – yet. After this article, it will be. We need new words for new concepts. We cannot yet speak of post-Covid because we are still thoroughly intwined with the pandemic. As we strain forward into the future with the so-called “new normal”, it seems we need to accept that Covid-19 is here to stay. Ours will be a Covidal life.

Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder in the USA state in The Conversation “many scientists believe that the virus that causes COVID-19 will likely settle into endemic patterns of transmission. But our inability to eradicate the virus does not mean that all hope is lost. Our post-pandemic future will heavily depend on how the virus evolves over the coming years. SARS-CoV-2 is a completely new human virus that is still adapting to its new host. Over time, we may see the virus become less pathogenic, similar to the four coronaviruses that cause the common cold, which represent little more than a seasonal nuisance.” They call the SARS-CoV-2 virus an ever-evolving target.

We can choose to live our Covidal life with optimism and cheer. We can look to the bright side. After all, what I tell myself every day will either lift me UP or tear me DOWN.

Who remembers the epic Monty Python team? Their movie The life of Brian raised a good many eyebrows back in the day (42 years ago). In fact it was banned in many countries for being sacrilegious. Yet the closing song Always Look on the Bright Side of Life has been a lifesaver for many, also during this pandemic. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvTnWpQpFIs). Some folks have adopted it as a kind of mantra to get through the dips and valleys of their black holes.

So, to look for the bright skies in décor (or in life) underlines a basic maxim: we each choose our own reaction to the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”. William Shakespeare had his character Hamlet ponder this in the famous To be or not to be soliloquy.

Herein lies the value of Dulux’s choice: by choosing Bright Skies – that very beautiful and merry blue – they urge us to look up to the sky, to the mountains from whence our help will come. As promised in Psalm 121, the Lord will watch over our coming and going, both now and forevermore.

Christine Stoman