Among the most popular idioms in English is the phrase, “every cloud has a silver lining.” It’s often true—clouds with the sun behind them can have a silver glow around the edges, surrounded by the sun’s light despite obscuring it. Bad things, as the saying then implies, will be accompanied by good, made bittersweet by some accompanying blessing. It’s an unmistakably powerful metaphor, and its simple eloquence seems to imply the truth of the phrase’s figurative sense. We often repeat it as those around us go through difficulty—we want to help, we want to reassure, and we’ll resort to clichés if we need to. However reassuring it may be, though, just like a cloud, the phrase’s initial sweeping elegance obscures something that, deep down, doesn’t have much weight at all.
We’re living in the wake of a pandemic that has wrought unimaginable pain on countless people. Hundreds of thousands are dead, millions have lost livelihoods, and billions have put their lives on hold. And even those who escaped the immediate danger of the virus aren’t safe—global rates of anxiety and depression skyrocketed by 25%. Our world will never be the same—the pandemic has altered so many fundamental things, albeit for better and for worse. Amid all this plague and pain, though, we now have new widespread tools for long-distance communication, new infrastructure for disease prevention, and a new public awareness of viruses. This seems like a textbook example of clouds’ silver linings, and many have treated it as such. People have spoken of the real benefits the pandemic has had for them—from finding the time to be outside, to picking up a new and fulfilling hobby, to learning how to relax. And admittedly, such observations can be both true and helpful. But the real danger of silver linings arises when we over-emphasize them, ignoring the cloud in the process.
We exist in a society dominated by a news cycle that seems perpetually to focus on the evil in the world. And while that outlook isn’t healthy, neither is its inverse—the happy-go-lucky insistence that all is fine, minimizing or even ignoring evil by pointing to silver linings above all else. The acknowledgement of suffering is incredibly important—it facilitates progress, builds a foundation for empathy, and helps to develop a more complete understanding of the world and its problems. If we want to take concrete steps to make the world a better place—for example, improving our societal ability to respond to pandemics—we need to start from reality, looking back at past suffering to learn how to prevent it in the future. Most importantly, though, by looking at the pandemic purely in terms of its silver linings, all we do is sever ourselves from reality—from the possibility of empathizing with those who suffered, of learning from them and from what they went through.
The pandemic, above all else, was awful. When we reduce it to just a chance for relaxation, an excuse to be outdoors, or a window to pick up a new hobby, we not only distort reality, but disregard the real suffering that so many have been through. We try to be optimistic, and we end up repressing reality.
Of course, silver linings can exist—but they’re by no means guaranteed. The path towards a better future, one worthy of optimism, lies in the acknowledgement of suffering, and the steps taken to learn from it. By ignoring evil, we set ourselves up to repeat it—and that’s the danger of silver linings.