Smallsteps is ill.
She has a flu, which is not unexpected considering that everyone has, has had, or will have a flu at the moment, as various strains are running their course locally. But, she is pretty ill was a mid-range fever and has spent the day on the couch in front of the TV, dozing in and out of sleep. It is probably the most she has ever sat in front of the TV and when she got up to go to the bathroom, she said that "walking feels weird" after sitting and laying for so long. She is also tired of being asked if she needs anything.
Last night as I put her into bed and we knew she was staying home, I was telling her about what I remember of those sick days at home from school, which wasn't much. However, I remember reading and drawing, because there was nothing on TV during the days back then, other than the odd midday soap. There was sometimes a "midday matinee" movie also, which no matter what it was, was better than Bold and the Beautiful or Days of Our Lives. Most of the time though, the TV was off and I would just be in bed, doing nothing at all.
Doing nothing used to be a thing.
I feel that we don't "do nothing" anymore and will instead do something useless to take up our time, like watch something or scroll a feed. I am not sure how many of us actually have any space to be quiet and sit with whatever thoughts may arise when it is quiet enough. It feels like there is always noise around, but I am not sure we notice it.
It reminds me of when I was working at McDonald's many years ago and after a late shift I'd walk out of the store into the night and it would feel like the night was silent. After being surrounded for hours by dozens of machines that beep and people constantly talking, the contrast of the evening was stark and a clear reminder of how we can become accustomed to the noise.
We seem to keep choosing noise.
Not just sound noise, but the irrelevant noises of the world that bring little value, other than taking up the space of our mind so we don't have to think, don't have to evaluate, don't have to be alone. And I think that last one is a big reason that people doomscroll their life away, as they find themselves in a situation where they are lonely but also unable or willing to build the relationships with the world that would have them doing something more, something valuable, something they actually enjoy.
Does anyone really enjoy doomscrolling?
Yet it is apparently a better alternative than sitting alone with thoughts in the silence. Random content that brings little personal value and is usually pointless even as entertainment as it gets scrolled by in a fraction of a second, is better than having to think and consequently, feel. Perhaps the fear is if we sit in silence with our thoughts, is that we will have thoughts that we don't want to have, realisations that we don't want to know, understanding that we would rather remain ignorant to - about who we are, how we are, and where else we could have been.
As adults, we often find that we will get sick once we have the space to be so. Our holiday starts, as does the illness. It is like our bodies know that we can't afford to be sick, until we have the space, but our bodies also know that we can't work endlessly without giving ourselves a break, because eventually the illness will force its way through.
Perhaps our minds are the same, where mental illness requires the space to heal, but we aren't giving it that space and instead keeping our brains engaged and distracted by a lot of irrelevant noise, rather than the space to be ill and recover to come back stronger. This could be part of the reason why there is so much mental illness in society now, where instead of dealing with the issues when they are small, they are ignored until they grow force their way out under pressure. And when they finally get our attention, they seem unsurmountable and we feel helpless, victimised by something out of our control.
But is it out of our control?
Maybe it becomes so at the extremes, because we chose not to deal with it when we had a chance to make a difference, to step away from the cliff. Once we have gone over that edge though, we fall and there is no way back, nothing to hold onto, just the gravity of the situation running its course, with its inevitable end. And because we ignored it for so long, we had no safety guards and signs to keep us away from the edge, or safety nets in place to catch us, just in case we ignored the signs.
We keep ignoring the signs.
But what is there to catch us?
When it comes to mental health in society today, we tend to expect external support from those around us, from governments, from healthcare, from companies. We feel that we are entitled to care, even though we have ignored all those signs and actively avoided dealing with our issues by quietening the noise and discovering what is there in the silence, waiting for attention. And yes, we should have safety nets in place for when we have failed, but we should also learn how to manage our lives so we don't fall off cliffs in the first place.
For that though, we need space away from the noise.
The helpings hands of silence.
Taraz
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