As
scientists and physicians work to treat and cure the physical symptoms of
long-haul COVID, many of us are struggling with the emotional long-haul of the
pandemic.
This is called Languishing - a sense of
stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if we're muddling through our days,
looking at our life through a foggy windshield.
According to experts languishing
is the neglected middle child of mental health. It’s the void between
depression and flourishing, the absence of well-being.
Languishing dulls our motivation,
disrupts our ability to focus, and triples the
odds that we'll cut back on work.
The term was coined by a sociologist named Corey Keyes, who was struck that many people who weren't depressed also weren't thriving.
Part
of the danger is that when we're languishing, we might not notice the dulling
of delight or the dwindling of drive. We don’t catch ourselves slipping slowly
into solitude; we're indifferent to our indifference.
So folks it could give us a socially acceptable response to “How are you?”
Instead
of saying “Great!” or “Fine,” imagine if we answered, “Honestly, I’m
languishing.”
"Inch by inch I conquered the inner terrain I was born with.
Bit by bit I reclaimed the swamp in which I'd languished. I gave birth to my infinite being, but I had to wrench myself out of me with forceps."
There are many theories as to what causes déjà vu.
One says that our "spirit" can actually travel faster in time than our earthbound bodies so it charges off into the future from time to time for reasons we can't explain.
Another claims that it's because we are reincarnated and old memories from past lives are seeping through into our current consciousness.
And then there's the parallel Universe theory that suggests our lives are always splitting off into different directions whenever we make big decisions and that at the point of experiencing déjà vu we are connecting with these parallel worlds.
All of which rather ignores the actual sensation of déjà vu that is simply joyous and mesmerising regardless of what it actually is.
Déjà vu experiences stay with us too, logging themselves into our memory banks where they can be withdrawn whenever those "déjà vu" conversations occur, usually over a few glasses of wine late at night!
"There's an opposite to déjà vu. They call it jamais vu. It's when you meet the same people or visit places, again and again, but each time is the first. Everybody is always a stranger. Nothing is ever familiar." ~~ Chuck Palahniuk
Visiting Norway in July 2010 and we stopped at this place for a short while, an eeriness came over me as I photographed this scene. I wanted to hop in that boat and paddle into the mist.
Time travellers
should prepare for tough sledding. If you went back to 1820 or even 1920, all
the sudden changes would discombobulate you. And the same is true for someone
who came forward to today.
We’ve got a
deep-seated desire for things to go back to normal, the way we were used to.
But this, this
moment of ours is now normal.
For now.
And then, there
will be another normal.
There is no “the new
normal”. Because that’s definitive.
There’s simply the
normal of now.
A new normal. This
too shall pass.
“We sense that ‘normal’ isn’t coming back, that we are being born into a new normal: a new kind of society, a new relationship to the earth, a new experience of being human.” ― Charles Eisenstein
