Category: Still Life: The Corona Diaries of an Existential Therapist. (Page 3 of 4)

Still Life #15: Shared Experience

April 11, 2020 / admin / 0 Comments

Online consults are not new to me. 7 years ago I moved my practice to Durban and many of my Johannesburg clients have stayed in contact in this way. But there’s something different about these consultations at the moment. Usually there is a level of removal between your client’s experience and your own. Suddenly, there’s a sense of a more deeply shared experience.

My anxieties are their anxieties. And yet, it’s remarkable how, at the same time, our idiosyncratic struggles are more relevant than ever. Problematic relationships with food or alcohol are suddenly more apparent than ever. Frustrations in a marriage won’t go unheard by the second week. Or, our usual anxieties seem to have suddenly taken up all the room in our heads or our beds.

I find myself wondering how doctors feel – treating something that they are equally at risk of contracting. I wonder what they do with that vulnerability. Does a hazmat help? Despite all the room we are privileged enough to have, I’ve been camping out on our bedroom balcony. My own hazmat hut, out from which I peer into people’s living realities through a screen.

When I’m not talking, I’m reading, obsessively. Trying to forge some sort of safety out of epidemiological predictions. “Modelling” is what they call it – using science to make guesses.

But I’m not taking my own advice. I’m not embracing what it means to be alive, in this moment. I’m trading the here and now for an imagined future.

I’ve promised not to read anything this weekend. Cold turkey!

Still Life #14: Keeping a Purpose

April 10, 2020 / admin / 0 Comments

“It is starting to feel like a sentence” a client told me today. A stark contrast from the relative excitement he felt the week before. The problem with “confinement” is that the hours and days start to merge. The usual impetus, no matter how trivial, to get up in the morning and put on an identity can be easily lost. And, with it, we can start to lose our purpose.

After the initial forced respite from the business of life is over, we might start to crave a need to feel useful. If you are not a medic, a grocer or an officer – this might prove trying. One of the greatest needs we have is to “achieve” something. Our definitions of achievement are very caught up in things we may not have access to at the moment, especially capital gains.

The existentialist in me would like to urge that we all learn to come undone a little bit. Given the absence of our usual distractions, it will teach us something about ourselves.

Even though I’m reluctant to sound like a life coach, if you are fearing for your sanity, I would encourage you to forge some sort of daily routine. We all need to anchor ourselves into something.

Still Life #13: “What is this?”

April 9, 2020 / admin / 0 Comments

I don’t know too much about David Icke, but he doesn’t strike me as the most lucid public figure. Anyone who believes in a genetically modified hybrid of reptilian-humans poised to take over the planet should be considered with scepticism. Especially if he is talking about science.

Who knows the exact origin of the #virus (yet) or the long-term health risks of #5g. But, what we do know is that the Corona virus is very real. There is definite science behind this.

In Korean #Zen, the practice is to meditate on a specific question: “What is this?” The attitude with which one meditates on this question is not to find a concrete answer, but to keep this kind of curious-questioning alive.

When we ask the question “what is this” in response to Corona, science is fast finding answers. By now there are at least estimates of how long it takes from infection to symptoms; how likely is an infected person going to infect others; or how long it takes from initial symptoms to the need for medical attention.

However, when it comes to #Corona, the question “what is this” needs to be asked more broadly and consistently. What is this vague discomfort that I feel? What is this nervousness about how much wine I still have for #lockdown? Why does the stillness outside wake me up at 2am?

It’s less about the answers and more about staying curious about “what is this #experience I am having” beyond the actual #science.

Still Life #12: The Naked Truth

April 8, 2020 / admin / 0 Comments

Brene Brown proposes that “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change”. I would add to this that the courage to “be with what is”, is a necessary precursor to vulnerability. In order to be vulnerable, we need to strip ourselves down to the bare truth of things.

This is difficult at the moment, given the layers of anxiety we might be trying to avoid. We are likely to sooth ourselves on a count down. 9 more days. But, even if we come out of lockdown (for economic reasons) it would be unwise to go back to business as usual.

To be vulnerable means to appreciate that our lives will be different for the next 18months (at least). To be vulnerable means to be willing to change our lives forever. If to be vulnerable means innovation, creativity and change; then to be vulnerable requires us to reflect on how we live. The tighter we hold on to how things have been, the more anxious we will continue to be. The less innovative we will become.

To be vulnerable requires an openness to re-evaluating how we school our children; earn our money; grow our food; treat our elderly; care for the sick.

To be vulnerable means I no longer see the homeless, the poor, the old, the foreign as living in a separate world to me.

To be vulnerable is to have the courage to see things as they are.

Still Life #11: Apocalyptic Existentialism

April 7, 2020 / admin / 0 Comments

This is Sam’s (12) Corona bird he scribbled out on a piece of paper for me. I framed it straight away. It encapsulates the balancing act we are all facing.

Some of us might be taking this time to savour a good meal or the bonds we share around the table while we simultaneously try to push away the contrasting anxiety of loss and the awareness of others less fortunate.

We juggle having to face the personal struggles we’ve had the luxury of ignoring while we wonder if a world crisis could make them suddenly irrelevant.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it will. Now is the time to face our demons or they will eat what’s left of us as the world goes hungry.

Although most of us are safe in the comfort of our homes. I wouldn’t recommend making a home of denial. Not of our own personal struggles nor of the state of things beyond our garden walls.

After reading my posts, a friend asked me today if I was okay. Therapists are not in the habit of being asked if they are okay. We don’t like to be asked. We like to take refuge in other people’s troubles to escape our own. I replied:

“Thank you. I think most people are in (perhaps necessary) denial. Focusing on zoom yoga and taking pictures of lockdown meals, while the world runs out of food and half of India dies. I’m trying not to jump on a soap box and I’m also trying to stay positive. People will die. And not just of Corona. South Africa will take years to recover and our politics, or lack thereof, will become more significant than ever. I think people want me to give them 7 steps to surviving lockdown with your kids, not apocalyptic existentialism. But it’s all I’ve got.”

Still Life #10: Brave New World

April 6, 2020 / admin / 0 Comments

This morning we woke to the sound of waves breaking and a ship droning in the distance. It left a streak of fumes across the horizon as it found its place in the queue to a closed port.

It felt as if, as the ship stopped, a pause had been pressed on everything today. Until the swallows started to swoop into the same view. They are back while the iron birds are gone.

Things will start up again, some day soon. Perhaps not as soon as we’d like. But I’m hoping to take this time to reimagine how this life can be lived.

Still Life #9: Quiet Voices of Wisdom

April 5, 2020 / admin / 0 Comments

I’ve been scanning the internet for wisdom from the usual voices of reason that I value. Those usual voices are quiet. Perhaps not because they have nothing to say but because they said it all a while ago. We just weren’t listening. Perhaps now is not the time for them to reach out. Perhaps now is the time they will all be reaching in. Today there was news from Arundhati Roy. A devastating account of life in India right now. She writes about how pandemics force us to leave behind everything about the world we knew and imagine an entirely new world. She encourages us to travel light in this transition. Why would we ever want things to return to a so called “normal”?

How do we imagine a new world? I think everything we need to know has already been said. We just have to get on with it, saving as many lives as we can along the way. As Camus wrote in The Plague “But what does it mean, the plague? It’s life, that’s all.”

So to help me find the courage to keep going, I decided to print the faces of all the voices I most value and put them on the wall above my desk. Somehow it feels slightly less forlorn, for now.

Still Life #8: United in Fear

April 4, 2020 / admin / 0 Comments

Corona virus has become the great revealer of what we are, merely human. It is the great leveller. It knows no boundaries. Borders, class, religions, education’s or any other means will not keep it at bay. It unites us through our shared fears.

I didn’t join Fi on the apocalyptic shopping spree. I didn’t want to face the hauntingly empty streets. Buddhists talk about Dukkha “that which is hard to face”. I spend my days focusing on other people’s fears so I don’t have to deal with my own. But, this time, it’s hard to hide my own fallibility. It’s impossible to deny that we’re all in this together. There are no experts. I only have a few guesses. We will lockdown longer than we would like. But, we will rely on one another for the answers. Death teaches us things about ourselves. We’re looking at it in the face.

Still Life #7: Between Care and Incarceration

April 3, 2020 / admin / 0 Comments

As the crow flies, our house is not far from the international airport. You could often hear the reverse thrusts of the Boeing’s as they landed in the distance. The sounds of the day don’t carry the same familiarity.

A chopper is in the habit of crossing the blank canvas above the house. The beat of its blades feels more like a panic than a reassurance. More people have been arrested than the number of confirmed covid19 cases. The virus isn’t only a threat to vulnerable lungs, it will reopen the wounds of a vulnerable society. The line between care and incarceration is far too thin.

Where have all the sex workers gone? How many women have been beaten in their homes?

Why does the guard in our street not know about washing his hands?

I close my eyes as I hear the chopper blade its way through the sky. I take a few breaths; I listen to my hurried heartbeat. It tells me it’s time to be concerned.

Still Life #6: A Global Noble Silence: A Time of Contemplation

April 2, 2020 / admin / 0 Comments

This time last year, we had just returned from Moscow. A city that seemed to have burst out of its seems with the ending of oppression. A busy, vibrant, creative hub. A place where people are forever moving, commuting and mingling. The living spaces we stayed in were small adequate warm retreats from the well trafficked cold streets. I found myself wondering what it might be like right now. We would wake in the middle of the night to the bustle in the streets below. Perhaps they are waking to an uncanny stillness this evening? We lie here discussing how grateful we feel for having had the chance to go there before all of “this”.

Our bedroom is about the size of the average apartment in Moscow. It felt indulgent this morning as I set myself up for a day of online consultations. I travelled from La Mercy to Hillcrest, as far as France. Corona is not so much the central topic of our conversations. It’s more external for now. “Out there”, rather than “in here”. A background noise like the sound of your fridge in the middle of the night. After a while you don’t even hear it, even though it continues to bother you. Regardless of country or concern, isolation brings us into clear focus of our more internal struggles. It is as if the globe just went into a self-retreat, a global noble silence. It is a time of contemplation. But, all the time, you can hear the fridge in the background if you listen close enough. Or, the ambulances in the streets of Paris as you pause between your sentences.

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