“Everything is unprecedented until it happens for the first time.”–Airplane Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger
Unprecedented! What else is there to say?
When I was new to professional writing, I had an annoying literary habit of using words so often that they’d lose their true meaning, get watered down by repetition. Thus, when I brought a draft article to my editor, she looked it over and read that I’d used the word “crucial” six times in the first three paragraphs. “John if you say something is ‘crucial’ over and over it loses its punch. Everything can’t be crucial. The spare use of ‘crucial’ gives it power as a descriptor.”
Mimi was an excellent teacher of rhetoric and so I wish I could ask her today about my use of the word ‘unprecedented’ and our use of the word ‘unprecedented’ as a culture. In the breathless and full volume media reports that scream out to us from our phones, computers, TVs, and radios, stories inevitably talking about the…unprecedented. You could say it’s unprecedented how often we have been describing things as of late as unprecedented.
Like a million cases of COVID on just one January day in our United States of America. That’s unprecedented. How about an attempted violent insurrection that sought to overturn a legitimate national election, something never, ever seen before in our history. Yes, unprecedented, as is the weird and scary fact that a year later upwards of ten percent of our fellow citizens think that same insurrection was led, not by supporters of the former President, but instead by left wing fascists. I kid you not. Their beliefs? Unprecedented.
But wait. There’s more!
Can anything top Tom Brady gunning for an amazing eighth Super Bowl ring at the grand old age of 44? No other quarterback has won even close to that number. Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana won four…ho hum. When I was 44, it got me out of breath just getting up off the couch during a Patriots game to grab another oversized plate of nachos. Hurt my arm lifting the sour cream container. But Brady and his seemingly invincible body? Unprecedented. As is the weather and climate change, like the fact that the summer of 2021 was the hottest ever in the history of temperature record keeping in this world.
Yes, it all seems so unprecedented.
Unprecedented is one of those words it’s hard to find a substitute for. Unbelievable? Not quite the same. Unequaled, unparalleled, or unrivaled? Getting warm. How about bizarre? Closer. Fantastic? Maybe. Yet no other word seems to come close to matching the smack and the pop of calling something unprecedented.
But even if we are speechless, wordless, in the face of the intensity of the past few years, my hope and prayer is that in these unprecedented times, we won’t be beaten down or exhausted or become apathetic. That’s the danger of these days of living at such full volume. That it will plain wear us out. That it will tempt us to throw up our hands in frustration and say, “I can’t do anything about it all anyway!” That worst of all, we might become apathetic or cynical about the state of our world right now and so roll over and just go back to bed.
Not me! Not you, I hope, either.
Unprecedented times instead call for unprecedented action. Is democracy threatened? Then get out and vote and become more active in the political process. Worried about how divided we are as a nation? Reach out to and then actually listen to another, whose views are different than your own. They may have something to teach you. Worn out by all the machinations and gyrations when it comes to COVID? Get vaxxed if you are not. Wear a mask religiously. Take all the health precautions you can in the knowledge that when you do so, it is not just for you. It is also for your neighbor, for the stranger, and the faster and more faithfully we all do our part, the faster COVID will finally, one great and glorious day, be gone.
My faith challenges me to live with such courage and commitment, especially in unprecedented times. To live with hope for better days, especially in tough times. To live with good humor and put all things in perspective. To live to fight another day. We can do it. We must do it.
So, I dare you. Be unprecedented in how you live this day.
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