What now?

How’s your mental health? Have you thought about it lately? It seems as if we just keep on going through the days from one packet of biscuits to the next. It’s obviously a very strange time- we have no template for how we are supposed to feel at the moment, and most of us are making it up as we go along. 

Remember- you are allowed to feel however you like. If you feel sad then that’s OK, or if you are having a great time that’s also fine. It’s tempting to beat ourselves up in times of hardship and to police our own feelings- as if we haven’t got enough going on! It can get a bit like a Punch & Judy show, except it’s us who are whacking ourselves around the head.

I wouldn’t bother. Make space for yourself, even if your life is suddenly very busy. If you have more time on your hands then try to fill it with things of beauty. It’s hard to remain in the present but it’s essential if you are to enjoy your life. 

As always I turn to my favourite philosopher and secret boyfriend Alan Watts:

“There is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity. But the contradiction lies a little deeper than the mere conflict between the desire for security and the fact of change. If I want to be secure, that is, protected from the flux of life, I am wanting to be separate from life. Yet it is this very sense of separateness which makes me feel insecure. 

To be secure means to isolate and fortify the “I,” but it is just the feeling of being an isolated “I” which makes me feel lonely and afraid. In other words, the more security I can get, the more I shall want.

To put it still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest.”

Focus on what you can control- the world will do what it will.