Give it up
(Image via @subliming.jpg)
Two weeks ago, when the world really started to feel apocalyptic, I started sleeping properly for the first time in a month.
If you struggle with insomnia, you know it can feel like a kind of prison. To be sleeping for eight hours again provided such full body, mind, and soul-level relief that I was in a much better place than I had been for weeks — despite the news reliably worsening by the hour.
As the world descended into crisis in earnest, I was just emerging from the ashes of a crisis of my own. I had lived through the kind of period where nothing in your life, from the personal to the professional, is okay. I took a week off work at the advice of a doctor, had to actively remind myself to eat, and openly sobbing on the bus became routine. As it all fell apart, my friends and family stepped in and took care of me in ways that seemed totally over the top, but also totally necessary.
During those long, awful days, one of the thoughts that was dogging me most was that this shouldn’t be happening to me. I do yoga everyday! I love therapy! I have solid boundaries with social media! I’m very aware of my mental health! I am extremely privileged!
As crazy as it sounds, I felt a not insignificant amount shame that I was still sitting in an out-of-hours GP waiting room on a blustery Sunday afternoon, seeking urgent pharmaceutical help because I couldn’t take another day of not being able to sleep, of feeling anxious, of suffering. The idea that I shouldn’t be suffering because of my immense privilege and hard-earned self knowledge was, in effect, creating a whole other layer of suffering. We humans are complex creatures indeed.
The various things that happened to get me to that point is a story for another time. (Perhaps I will write a post-pandmic memoir.) But I do want to share something that I learned, because it’s helping me get through this profoundly disruptive and panic-ridden time. As lessons go, it is as simple as it is brutal: You are not in control.
There’s probably something I could say here about the gravity of an unprecedented pandemic putting my own comparably small-minded personal crisis into perspective. But that’s not really how humans work, is it? If anything, my life falling apart for a few weeks in February felt remarkably similar to the world falling apart as March got going. I was just more prepared for the latter, because I was forced to do quite a bit of urgent work to get myself through the former.
There’s a question that came up in therapy last month that went something like this: Which is worse – Your life imploding and knowing you could have done something to stop it? Or your life imploding and accepting that there’s nothing you could have done to stop it? Ultimately, I’ve come to believe, the latter is more difficult and terrifying to accept, and yet more freeing at the same time.
I think the immense anxiety we’re all feeling right now has something to do with our reluctance to accept — to really, really accept! — that we are not in control. That is not to diminish the very real economic and indeed life and death consequences that this crisis will have, and is already having, for so many people. Many of those consequences aren’t acceptable, and governments should be doing everything to prevent and mitigate them. I’m not suggesting we just accept the destruction and let it wash over us.
But I do think it’s helpful to know that there are two layers to this: There is the unpredictable nature of what is going on, and there is our reaction to it. How we meet the singular challenge of this time is fascinating reflection of us, individually and collectively.
In my head, it goes like this: First, we wake up every day and we are alive, which, you gotta admit, is not nothing. Then we confront the bizarre reality that we are going to be in our homes with our movements and personal freedoms curtailed for some indefinite period of time, as news of suffering unrelentingly streams in through every screen. Businesses are failing, friends and loved ones are suffering, many jobs (including my own) are in peril.
We then have to decide, every morning and in every moment, what to do with all that. Do we resist it by monitoring the news constantly to find a sign of when it’s going to end, and in turn creating another layer of suffering when we find it hasn’t? Or do we surrender to it, finding strange and unexpected opportunities to help others and enrich ourselves while the whole capitalist system is on pause, with its future in genuine doubt. Do we look outward for assurance, or inward for edification?
There’s also the question of how society will meet this challenge. The Guardian’s Zoe Williams said it best: “If you look at what the first and second World Wars did to our notion of society and what it meant, we did the most radical good in history after those wars, because we all sustained losses, we all sustained anxiety and pain and you kind of remembered what mattered. And it was out of that spirit that we built the NHS, and the largest program of social housing we ever conceived. So I think there is something about a reset in this. There’s something about remembering what matters.”
That all sounds very high-minded, but I’m the first to admit that in the past week I’ve had to walk myself through the above thought process multiple times per day — often more than once per hour. Sometimes I fail and fall apart; sometimes I manage to keep going. I don’t expect it to get any easier. But I know if socialist and humane policymaking is what’s going to get society through this time then the spiritual practice of surrender is what’s going to get me through it personally.
When my own life was in peak crisis last month, I kept using the phrase "burn it all down." Looking back with a few weeks distance, I think those words signalled a radical acceptance of the fact that nothing was going to be the same in my life when I got to the other side. I feel the same about the world right now.
Here are some things getting me through this time
Make a list of things that bring you enjoyment each day, however pathetic and small. Write it down on pen and paper and set your expectations low. The other day mine was: the smell of opening a new bag of coffee, trees in bloom on my walk, my parents, talking to my sister about the Real Housewives of NYC.
Zoom way out. The human race has been through a lot of shit before; we’re really not as special as we think. Nothing captures this better than this C.S. Lewis passage about the atomic bomb.
More wisdom from Lori Gottlieb on anxiety, Elizabeth Gilbert on fear, Russell Brand on how the virus has exposed the myth of free market capitalism, and The School of Life on calm.
Do something to help someone else! I am helping friends and colleagues find freelance work through amplifying/connecting them where I can; pre-ordering books for people I know who have releases coming up; supporting the IRL businesses I love in whatever ways they are asking.
I love how my yoga teacher Naomi Annand describes the practice’s animating principles in her book: “deepest acceptance and unwavering non-judgement.” Yoga prepares us for these times, because it not only teaches us to practice those ideas in a physical way on the mat, but also in a mental way off of it. And you can do it at home! Very practical in a pandemic.
If you’re new to meditation and/or yoga and want to give it a go while you have all this time on your hands, here are three places to start:
Naomi’s book for building a self practice is way better than using YouTube. You can buy it in the UK or US without leaving your house.
I find Sharon Salzberg’s guided meditations so accessible for beginners — and such a relief.
The simple practice of thinking of your breath as four parts: the inhale, the pause at the top, the exhale, the pause at the bottom. It’s always there, a kind of metronome for your existence. At any moment, you can sit down for two minutes and notice how your body moves with each part of the breath.
Here are some things I wrote about this time
The very sensible advice to not consume the news all day is not an option for me; I have done nothing but read, report, and write about coronavirus since late January. It isn’t great, yet at the same time I am a journalist who covers the industry that is ground zero for this crisis. It’s been amazing to watch my colleagues mobilize around covering this crisis essentially 24/7. (Support our work!)
There’s a weird satisfaction that comes when something you’ve been obsessed with for years comes crashing into the public consciousness. In this case, it’s the cruise industry — specifically how shockingly unregulated it is. I’ve been doing a lot of incremental coverage of the industry’s utterly spectacular implosion, but this essay sums up my broad feelings.
I also wrote about how the unprecedented disruption to the travel industry resembles something else I think about a lot: climate change. We knew mass disruption was coming, but we didn’t know it was coming so soon. What can we learn from it?
I’ve also been covering the totally weird nature of promoting destinations when there is nowhere to travel to.
Here are some things you can read/listen to/ enjoy that have nothing to do with coronavirus
This Reply All episode about the missing song is as good as everyone says it is.
I just discovered the Love Letters podcast, which is great for when you take a short walk and don’t want to listen to a podcast about the news.
This profile of Richard Rohr, a 76 year old Franciscan Friar whose ideas are popular with millennials, including me.
How to be perfect, a poem.
Word Soup:
“It is crucial to remember that anger, joy, boredom and love are biological phenomena just like fever and a cough.” —Yuval Noah Harari
“First they pull the rug out from under your feet, then they pull the floor out from under the rug, then they pull the ground out from under the floor, and now you’re getting somewhere.” —Stephen Mitchell