A Traumatised Generation: Part Two
December 30, 2021
How to live in the present
As I write, there are rumours of new restrictions in England post-NYE, perhaps another form of lockdown or a ‘circuit-breaker’. It’s almost impossible to predict what our government will decide to do, which means we are all living on edge. 2021 is ending, but the underlying anxiety and stress that has become normal will likely stay. The stress and anxiety are due, in part, to the fact that we have been conditioned to plan for the future, something we are unable to do fully right now, and we are hopeless at living in the present.
There are infinite responses to an impending lockdown: despair, frustration, indifference, slight relief (for the germophobic perhaps) or stubborn optimism.
I’m a stubborn optimist and, as an extrovert who can overstretch and over-socialize herself, I found in the earlier lockdowns that a pause in everyday life afforded time for creativity, productivity, and an increased appreciation for my close family and friends. However, subsequent lockdowns absolutely frustrated me, the excitement of having so much time wore off, and my coping mechanism was to stick to routines and work on projects as much as possible and to just get through it.
Frustration at something beyond our control eats us up, and chronic frustration, followed by depression and anxiety, hit our generation hard. Most people hated the lockdowns because we are a generation who have been trained to obsessively think about our futures, everything in our lives is geared to the next set of exams or milestones, and suddenly we’ve got to live day by day, in the present. Terrifying stuff.
It is traumatizing; those exams that we were told MEANT EVERYTHING were cancelled, the milestones were missed, and it might feel like we are rag dolls being flung into the air. This has highlighted our severe inability to live in the present, obviously, because as a generation we were told our whole lives that it is necessary to always be reaching and pushing for the next thing.
However, we are more adaptable than we give ourselves credit for and amongst the pain, fear, and shock, we became (to an extent) content with and interested in the present. The world slowed down. Flora and fauna flourished with the reduced human impact, and so did we. We saw the benefits. And then we got bored.
We have now had 6 months with limited restrictions and relative freedom, and maybe we have forgotten some of those lessons that we learnt in the Spring of 2020.
I wonder if that place of acceptance, and even enjoyment, that many of us reached in the novelty of the first lockdown would be worth trying to find this time around. The pandemic is staying, the virus will continue to mutate and develop, the nations will adapt and eventually get on top of it, but they haven’t yet and we’re not out of the woods.
As with all things in life, balance is key, so I don’t suggest we go from thinking only about the future to only about the present, but that we find a happy medium.
Perhaps we need circuit breaks in life.
It should be normalized to fall off the grid every now and then, to immerse ourselves in creative projects, to explore, to rest and to live in the present. I guess that’s what holidays before the internet were like: total disconnection and freedom from the everyday. These days we stay attached to the rest of the world and think about what photos will look good on Instagram.
Maybe we should choose to take our own circuit breaks, and if there happens to be a government-mandated one, then just pretend you were planning one anyway and isn’t it good fortune that the dates line up!
Living in the present might mean sleeping a lot, maybe it means caring for and nurturing your body so that right now you feel good, or maybe it means something a little more creative, dynamic, and outrageous. It might mean taking risks and doing the things that don’t make sense in your 5-year plan but make perfect sense for what YOU want right now. In everything, love yourself and those around you as well as you can.
Whatever you do, do it for you. Do it for the version of you that exists in the present.
Good luck, you’ve got this.