Have you noticed what a lot of advice we are getting these days about how to fill our time while the lockdown is in place?
Many people routinely fill their lives with activities. It is their way of 'coping' - which is worth exploring as an idea in itself. When life is good, no coping is required! We forget about it. So what is 'coping' all about?
It is sometimes a means of avoidance. Something is not good about our lives, and we need to 'cope' until it gets better. We mean 'put measures in place', in government speak. That is fair enough when someone says to me, 'I coped very well with that situation.' Because they are normally talking about something that is out of the ordinary for them, perhaps a crisis, an accident, an unexpected death, an emotional exchange that they have found difficult in the past. And I say, "Great! Well done." But from an everyday experience point of view, we do not need coping much at all. We just live!
So people who routinely fill their lives with activities are perhaps 'coping.' What may they be coping with? Some of the things I've come across are:
1. Living in an unhappy relationship;
2. Doing a job they dislike or hate;
3. Being bullied regularly;
4. Having too little income to do what they would ideally like to;
5. Struggling with an addiction, a phobia, depression, a mental health problem like anxiety;
6. Experiencing bereavement;
7. The demands of children;
8. Boredom;
9. Pain or any variety of regular ill health;
10. Disability;
11. Discrimination and prejudice;
12. The effects of war or being a refugee.
You can see that my list is not exhaustive, and in no particular order. It is not even divisible into 'good' or 'bad' experience. Some of it is what others do to us, some what we do to ourselves, much a bit of both. Some is experience with an end in sight. Some is more or less part of life's pattern.
I'm struck by the thought that many of these things are capable of being changed, though not all. What we can change in all of them is the way we see the problem. There are people with disabilities who use them to achieve things they might never have achieved without the disability. Now, it would be very foolish and lacking compassion to suggest that they do not suffer because of their coping! Of course they do, just like anybody would in that situation. But they seem able to transcend the pain, exhaustion, low self-esteem, by moving beyond it to some higher goal. I don't say everyone who is disabled 'should' do this! or could! Perish the thought. I simply say that those individuals seem to.
My point here is that 'coping' is not bad. But it is a problem in people who cannot be alone. Just as you can't get away from your gammy leg or foreshortened arm, so you cannot get away from being alone some of the time. And if the government orders you to do so, you are in a bit of a fix. Hence the perfect storm of people giving us advice about what to do to 'cope' in that situation.
How about taking a different tack and asking yourself why it's such a problem in the first place? I'm feeling quite content while I write this blog. But then, I'm a writer, so I would, wouldn't I? What happens when I've finished and get up? The answer seems to be nothing much. In the sense that there is no basic or deep change in my mood. I don't 'have to' have something to do next! I do tend to do things, and occasionally I feel grumpy about having to choose among so many things I 'could' do. But I've learned that this feeling is really me putting pressure on myself to 'do something'! Just because a friend sent me a whizz recipe for vegetarian chilli doesn't mean I have to make it. I may decide never to make it, but thank them for their kindness!
I would say that a big turning point in my life came when I found that I did not 'have to' do anything much at all. Yes, earn my daily bread. That's useful. (Not earn it twice over!) And maybe keep the house clean enough so I'm healthy and don't have to feel horrified about having a visitor! That seems like practical sociability and hygiene (though again it is different from having to have the house so ship-shape that you could eat your dinner off the floor!) And do a bit of shopping now and again. Apart from that, I have pretty unlimited choices. You will want to add some, I'm sure, like 'look after grandad' or 'go to the benefits office' or 'take the dog for a walk.' Everyone has a minimum list of things they feel it is probably wise to do. That said, our lives are more open and free and crammed with choices than any generation has ever experienced. Many of them do not depend on money, though we always think they do.
So: what is the magic ingredient that allows some of us to be alone, and feel content about it? I'd suggest that the magic ingredient behind most successful lives (not rich lives, not married or single lives, not employed lives, not even busy lives!) is simple: it is self-esteem. Underneath all the 'coping' strategies we employ, everything in my list above and more besides, assumes a particular kind of relationship with oneself. It is a relationship in which I think I'm a basically 'ok' person, as Thomas Harris wrote long ago. And also that other people are basically ok. I'm ok - you're ok. I'll leave 'you're ok' to another day - it will be called something like 'Paranoia - the social 'flu of our time!' But here, let's focus on the feeling of being ok.
If you cannot be alone you are employing coping strategies whose aim, deep down, is to avoid being with yourself, which you do not find ok. Get it? You live with a partner you don't love because you are afraid of having no one. You do the job you hate because you are afraid of having no job, therefore not being an ok person. You are bullied because it's what you deserve, since you are not ok. And so on.
If we can reach a feeling of basic contentment with ourselves, we have come a long, long way psychologically. Warning: I don't say 'behave like a person who feels content with themself!' The way to feel content with yourself is not to lie your way into it! You have to be able to hack it in truth and reality. It's not something you do at all, in my experience, but something that occurs, at some magic moment in life. And how, when and why does it occur?
I thought this blog would be a one-off, but I feel a series coming on! The fact is, most of you know in your hearts that it is a struggle to be content with yourself. A place to start would be to look back at my blog on anxiety. But I think a series of blogs on the subject of 'being a contented self' might be my next task.
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