Why bother?

Wordly Inspiration: it may be a wound, it may be a hunger, it may be a question, but writing is always worth the bother (from the socials, source unknown).

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Uncertain - about these uncertain times

We are living in uncertain times.

Many of us feel very unsettled, even in the relative safety of Australia. When we are not searching out the latest pandemic news, we are flooding social media with our struggle to find focus or positivity, or we are comforting ourselves with nostalgia on travel, books and music, getting into gardening and busy work.

I sure feel a greater sense of uncertainty than I did this time last year.

The words: 'these uncertain times' are everywhere - news stories, ministerial announcements, articles on physical and mental health, reports, and advertisements for everything from cleaning products to insurance to dating apps. Some go so far as to call our times 'an era of uncertainty'. (Here's an Australian example from 2018.) An American report published in 2004, told us to expect that 2020 would be characterised by a 'pervasive sense of insecurity' related to concerns over job security, fears around migration, terrorism and internal conflicts, and military conflicts .

No prediction of a global pandemic though, the latest source of the ubiquitous statement that we are 'living in uncertain times'.

But are 'these times' truly more uncertain than other times? 

In his book, The Antidote - Happiness for people who can't stand positive thinking, Oliver Burkeman says that every era describes itself as characterised by unprecedented uncertainties and lack of stability. 

Just a few of his examples:

♦️  In 1951, Alan Watt highlighted a contemporary 'feeling that we live in a time of unusual insecurity'… referring to the impact of the breakdown of long-established family, social, economic and belief traditions.

♦️ Writing about the Roman Republic and Empire over three centuries is replete with political instability and social unrest and the impact on people who felt their future was disturbingly uncertain.

The idea that earlier times were more certain and stable than our own experience of life is really just nostalgia, based on an imagined and idealised past.

In fact, when you're fully engrossed in living your own life, you face uncertainty all the time.

Because life is irrevocably, constantly and most certainly uncertain. 

The global pandemic reveals a fundamental truth: we humans are deeply deluded that we are fully in control of ourselves, our future, our world. We desperately want to believe we can make our lives certain, set and fixed. 

TATKOP 122

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who can cope with uncertainty and those with the correct myth. 

See more in the TATKOP series.

Creative - of course you are!

A pandemic is a lesson in living with reality. It will be a hard lesson, there will be grief and heartache.

For many across the world, the Covid-19 pandemic means financial and health insecurity. Fear of disease and death is compounded by loss of income or housing, and accompanied by unease about governments seeking only to seize more power.

For many of us in Australia right now, though, we are simply stuck at home. After the initial anxiety spike, the panic buying and the grief of ruined plans, we find ourselves facing a new reality of being in the one place, all the time, without our usual activities and distractions.

Those of us away from the 'front line' of Covid-19 have a sudden excess of time. It feels strange.

This strange feeling is largely the lack of opportunity to consume.

From Oliver Sacks

Wordly Inspiration from Oliver Sacks, who not only wrote prolifically, he regularly reflected on the process of his own writing.

"The act of writing is itself enough; it serves to clarify my thoughts and feelings. The act of writing is an integral part of my mental life; ideas emerge, are shaped, in the act of writing...a special, indispensable form of talking to myself."

See more Wordly Inspiration. 

Wild and zany - whose adjective is it anyway?

In these days of ubiquitous social media, online dating and 'tell us how good you are' job interviews, we frequently need to describe ourselves.

To do this, we use adjectives like friendly, fun, down-to-earth, positive, thoughtful, creative, caring, trustworthy, dedicated, motivated, effective. You can even find helpful lists online if you need more impressive adjectives for your profile.

When I was young, we were schooled in modesty: to assume effort, character and ability would speak for themselves. Self promotion was frowned upon. So, the contemporary need to self-describe and self-promote has been uncomfortable for me.

But I'm used to it now. I no longer panic in interviews when asked to describe myself in three words, and I follow the job seeker's guideline: 'Don't be too modest'. 

But sometimes the way people talk about themselves, well, it just doesn't feel right to me.

Source: Public Domain

Here are a few examples that feel off beam:

• We're soooo crazy! - group of performers in an interview after a concert
• We're wild; we're out of control; look out world! - group of 30-something football fans
• My parties are always great because I'm so zany! - woman at public function she organised
• We're all really cool; you'll like working here - new work colleague.

When a person says these sorts of things, it's not that I disagree with them. What feels strange and a bit off is that they use these adjectives to describe themselves.

I find myself wondering, is it actually their adjective to use?

TATKOP 121

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who look for the answer 'out there' and those who look 'in here'. 

See more in the TATKOP series.