It’s tricky when you’re putting stuff out there, in the public domain, albeit in a very modest way, as with this retirement blog, and you’re doing it at a time of some national stress, to know what the most helpful, to other people’s mental health, tone is to adopt. That’s quite a sentence both in terms of length, complexity and psychological weight.
Let me explain. Here we are entering a second (or third) complete lockdown and people, retired or otherwise, will be feeling more than a little pissed off. Mrs Summerhouse reported no brioche loaves after her trip to Aldi. Now that’s tough. So do I ignore the situation on the grounds that people will have heard enough and don’t need the summerhouse years to add to the misery?
Or do I try and write something wise and helpful. Failing that just write something vaguely relevant, maybe even humorous? I’m prompted in the direction of the latter by an offering on my FB page this morning (Wednesday). It was as follows:
Remember most of your stress comes from the way you respond not the way life is. Adjust your attitude. Change how you see things. Look for the good in all situations. Take the lesson and find new opportunities to grow. Let all the extra stress, worrying and over-thinking go.
Hibiscous Moon via a friend, Robin.
Yes I know it’s quite happy clappy ‘psychology’ of the sort I generally disdain. Also, as many of the comments that went with it, point out, easy to say, difficult to actually do. Furthermore at a time when people are actually dying through no fault of their own, it may come across as rather glib.
All that said the above echoes a part of the psychology (mostly in a now fashionable Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) context), I used myself when working as a psychologist. I think the following original quote came from Alfred Adler (I could be wrong here) who said, there are no such things as facts, just the interpretation you put upon them.
I remember sharing this with an intelligent friend, a lecturer in philosophy at Leeds University. He completely agreed, which surprised me a bit, and defied me to come up with one single aspect of human existence that could be called an undisputed fact. I remember I struggled to come up with one that he couldn’t put a subjective spin on.
I mentioned this to Mrs Summerhouse on our morning dog-walk. Well, that’s a tree, she said, pointing at one (as above), and that’s a fact. I suppose cognitively I’ve slowed down but I couldn’t think of a way of disputing this assertion. I’m sure there is one, maybe on the lines of what some people call a tree others might not. Nah, that’s not a tree that, is a bush. That kind of thing.
Despite a potentially large number of grey areas I think the above is still basically ‘right’. Whatever that means. ‘True’ again, what’s that? But before I disappear in a puff of over-used quotation marks, let me say, and I say this as arguably a very miserable person, I think it is worth trying to look for the positive etc. in the current situation. And yes I know it’s easy for a retired person to say, we’ve basically carried on with the same life style as before the pandemic.
True, no pub lunches, no luxury shopping (mainly musical), no travel, no visits to our vineyard or Derbyshire, family home, very little contact with children, but all this is copeable with. Although I have to admit this second (or third) lockdown has hit me a bit harder than the first one. Not sure why. Maybe the time of year although bad weather doesn’t bother us.
Anyway, in an effort to rise above it and put a positive spin on life, I started employing a strategy recommended on the BBC website about maintaining one’s mental health. This was, write down three things each day to be grateful for.
So for five days I wrote down three good things each day in my diary. Then I got bored with it and stopped. There are two (or three) possible constructions to put on this – one, I didn’t need to do this because I’m not that ‘depressed’ (not a word I generally allow passed my lips or keyboard). Two, I’m so (that word) that I’ve lost the will to do anything at all, positive or otherwise. Three I have a short attention span.
But then, if I am emotionally inert, I wouldn’t be writing this retirement blog, would I? And, as regular readers may remember, I find writing my best form of therapy (another word I don’t use easily but that’s just a left-over from my working days). These days using the term in its broadest sense seems fine and in these times we all need to be flexible.
So there we are, a short retirement blog and see what I’ve done there? This started out as a blog intended to be vaguely helpful to others (and there is good advice in here somewhere). And it’s ended up as a therapeutic exercise for me, me, me. Who’d have thought it? Oh, you would.