Feeling a bit better – certainly heading in the right direction, although I know there’s a long way to go. Feeling stronger emotionally and mentally, which means I stand a better chance of coping with whatever comes along next.
Thanks and more thanks to the people who’ve read this blog and have been so supportive on here, or in real life. It really has made a huge difference.
I had a session with a counsellor – it helped to put things into perspective and to reassure me that some of the things I’m dealing with really are difficult things to deal with, and that I’m not a pathetic human being for not always being able to cope. Particularly at the moment, when we are starved of normal face-to-face human contact, I needed to know that.
I miss a-coffee-and-a-rant with friends. You know, where you can have a full-on whinge but you’re with a friend and it’s OK.
Was I suffering from depression? I don’t know – I don’t think so. There are many shades of emotion between complete happiness and total depression. If I had to assign a colour to the way I was feeling, it wouldn’t be the dark black of depression, but more of a sludgy green.
I was trawling the internet, looking at this and that, and came across Stephen Fry talking about humanism.
Now, as I’ve mentioned before on here, I’m not religious.
I used to be sent to Sunday School as a child (my grandma was the Sunday School teacher, so I guess my parents didn’t have much choice). I got married in church, first time round. But other than that, not so much. I struggle, intellectually, with why there should be a god at all.
But I find the ‘idea’ of religion fascinating – why so very many people feel the need to believe in ‘something’ – something that can’t be proved. Whether that’s a belief in Zeus, or Thor, or St Christopher, or Tarot cards, or lucky numbers, or knocking on wood – or the God of the Jews, the Muslims and the Christians.
CS Lewis said, ‘Everyone has a god-shaped hole in them’, which I think may well be true (but just wanting there to be a god doesn’t mean there actually is a god).
It must be quite nice, having that sort of belief – something to comfort you when you need it, someone to blame when things go wrong (it’s all God’s will). There have been times in my life when that sort of comfort would have made things easier – and shrugging my shoulders and blaming god might be quite handy too.
Anyway – in my humble opinion, there is no god. I see no reason why there should be. And so we just have to crack on.
The clip I stumbled across ended with Stephen Fry saying, ‘The way to find meaning in life is to get on and live it, as fully and as well as we can’.
And that has resonated very deeply with me. We only come this way once. What we do with our time on the planet is up to us – but we do actually have to do it.
I’ve spent the last little while feeling very sorry for myself – lots of things going on, most of which are not of my making, but all impacting on me one way or another. And all against the background of the Coronavirus Pandemic and all that it means for all of us.
And I’ve realised that – well, this is it. This IS my life – and any amount of feeling sorry for myself and wishing it was different isn’t going to alter that. All I can actually do is live it – as fully and as well as I can.
I don’t yet know what that means in practical terms – but I know it doesn’t mean spending the day on the sofa watching the TV and hoping that everything will have gone away by the time the credits roll.
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Photo by Anna Urlapova from Pexels
