I have spent a career writing, teaching and speaking about the power of spoken word. I bring a rhetorical understanding of language to various settings: how medical professionals talk, how we talk about people with disabilities, talk within interpersonal relationships and now, talk about COVID. By rhetorical understanding, I mean that words have meanings, are persuasive, contain energy, and have consequences. In short, words create worlds. I refer to this as the generative power of the world. We oftentimes think that words describe a world but they create a world. That is why words are worthy of our attention.

One of the first things I noticed during COVID was that our language was eerily the same. Everyone spoke the words “stuck at home” and we still speak that way. This captured my attention because I did not perceive myself to be “stuck at home” but instead, perceived myself to be fortunate to be at home where I was able to teach from home and be with my family. Here is where all the facets about the power of words come into play. We chose the worst way to speak about being at home. “Stuck at home” carries a negative energy and makes us victims. I have already offered what a more positive energy sounds like: “fortunate to be at home” takes us to a place of gratitude and also allows us to see those who were truly “stuck.” These were older people in nursing homes, children with disabilities who were living outside of the home, and those who died alone in hospitals. I contend that we did not see these people (unless we had first-hand experience) because our language made it difficult to see.

Our language during COVID made our situations so much worse than it needed to be. We were not all suffering during COVID but we acted as if we were. I was not suffering. I did not get seriously sick. I did not lose a loved one because of COVID. I did not lose a job because of COVID.

Here, I am writing about one way that we spoke about COVID that was extremely detrimental. There are a total of twelve axioms that I outline within my book. Ways in which we spoke that made it seem like we were speaking the truth but instead, we were repeating words that others spoke that made the pandemic, with all the difficulties that it brought, so much more difficult.

For over thirty years, I have been teaching an interpersonal communication class that is anchored in the philosophy of Stoicism. I apply these principles of Stoicism to the analysis of how we spoke about COVID. I do so in much the same way as Viktor E. Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, carried what he knew of Stoicism with him as he entered the Nazi concentration camps as a prisoner. It was that philosophy that saved his life, allowed him to continue his work from behind barbed wire, and go on to create a theory within psychology called logotherapy which has informed readers since the 1950s, when the book was published. Frankl never tells us that what he is writing about is Stoicism but once the reader is familiar with the philosophy, it is clear that his book is an application of Stoicism.

Some readers may push back when they read my claim that we made the pandemic worse by the mindset we chose. I take as my starting place that Frankl was writing about the concentration camps. His work provides a model of possibility. Let’s look at some of the Stoic principles that Frankl made good use of within the camps and could have helped us during COVID:

Some principles of Stoicism

• Choice: The Stoics believed that how you look at something is your choice. The reason why this is true is because we are radically free. We can see things in the worst possible way (like stuck at home) or to make the best of what we have been given (fortunate to be at home).
• Acceptance: The ancient Stoics believed that things do not change because we do not like them and misery is created by not accepting how things are. Also, as stated above, to accept and make the best of something is a choice to be optimistic, a deeply Stoic principle. I have learned, through my life, that acceptance is a process and some things will constantly need to be revisited and relearned each time I encounter the same topic.
• Control: The ancient Stoics also believed that we should learn to be able to judge what is within our control and what is not. We spoke with hubris as if we were the ones controlling the timeline of a raging pandemic. This only created more misery.
• Suffering: Part of this philosophy is understanding that to live is to suffer and to be human is to create meaning from the suffering. It is most certainly a waste to have suffered and not learned, used to advance oneself or others, or transform to see the suffering (as difficult as it is) into a blessing and not a curse.

During COVID, we spoke in ways that greatly reduced our sense of autonomy, constructed ourselves and our children as victims, reinforced entitlement within children by telling them that COVID should never have happened to them, missed an opportunity to be better and stronger and model these qualities for our children, did not make the best of what life offered us, spoke as if we were in control instead of the pandemic as being in control, hated all virtual learning and set up our children to hate virtual learning too and we emphasized what was taken from us and most importantly, emphasized what was taken from our children.

Janet Farrell Leontiou is a communications professor.