One of the strange things about the last year and a bit is that we have a shared experience.
That isn’t completely true, of course. Different jurisdictions have attempted to handle the pandemic via different methods. Some countries locked down hard, others less so. Some places mandated masks early, others later.
But we all shared the experience of our regular lives being upended in a short period of time. I, for example, had been looking forward to at least another three weeks of ski season in the sun. And then, within a week, I was in my house, with my family, and we did not go out together. One of us made a trip to the grocery store, masked, once a week.
We saved a lot of money on gasoline.
After the initial shock, I embraced the change. I was one of the lucky, able to work from my home. I set up a home work station right next to the desk I use to write. I got connected and reconfigured my work machine, and for the last year I have been able to do my job just as well as if I had been in the office. Better, actually, because I was never more than a minute from being able to deal with something work-related.
I started a home based exercise program, mostly body weight resistance exercises. I walked on the school field near our house early in the morning. I completed one novel, and started another, longer one. We binged TV shows together.
And yet, last fall, nothing mattered. I couldn’t gather enthusiasm for anything. I couldn’t complete anything – I had a dozen small projects started, and abandoned. Two dozen. More. Nothing seemed important enough to hold my attention.
I was languishing.
Odds are, a good number of you were, too. Hadn’t seen friends in months, hadn’t visited family, couldn’t go to the movies or the mall, couldn’t look at people’s faces when you did venture out into a sterilized world of hand sanitizer, door guards, lineups, masks, and nobody ever touching anyone.
For me, the state of languishing is similar to the state of depression in many ways. The big difference is that for the last year, I haven’t wanted to do things because nothing mattered. When I am depressed, I don’t do things because I can’t. It’s not that there is no point, it’s that they are impossible.
I’m depressed, I thought. That’s all this is, I’m just depressed, and I know how to deal with that. I increased my exercise and used a bright light in the mornings. I replaced my usual lunch of leftovers with a healthy smoothie. I put limits on my screen time, and on social media use.
None of these things helped. I felt better, but I still wasn’t getting anything done. Things still didn’t matter. I started using a reminder list and a schedule, attempting to regiment my life. That helped some, but only a little.
Then two things happened.
- I started Mindfulness exercise – at first I meditated for just five minutes a day, then ten, then fifteen. (I use, and recommend, Headspace).
- I read an article that my wife forwarded to me. This article. (It’s behind a paywall)
I realized that I was languishing. The things I had been doing to fight depression didn’t work, because I wasn’t depressed. I was in a sort of strange middle ground between doing well and doing really badly. I was in a state of mere existence. Nothing mattered because I couldn’t plan anything. I was in a continual state of reaction, sitting and waiting for the world to do something.
At first, I didn’t recognize the symptoms that we all had in common. Friends mentioned that they were having trouble concentrating. Colleagues reported that even with vaccines on the horizon, they weren’t excited about 2021. A family member was staying up late to watch “National Treasure” again even though she knows the movie by heart. And instead of bouncing out of bed at 6 a.m., I was lying there until 7, playing Words with Friends.
It wasn’t burnout — we still had energy. It wasn’t depression — we didn’t feel hopeless. We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless. It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing.
Adam Grant, ‘There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing’, New York Times, April 2021
The New York Times article described it precisely. Joyless and aimless.
As I write this, in May of 2021, we still haven’t been anywhere. We still wear masks whenever we go out. We haven’t eaten in a restaurant in forever. Haven’t listened to live music for what feels like the last half of my life. But I have made some changes, and things are starting to improve. There’s a reopening plan where I live. Other places in the world have reopened. There is hope.
I continue my daily meditations. Mindfulness practice has helped me enormously.
I have started writing the second volume of my planned trilogy. I managed to give it a title, as well: The Eye of Esheen Khor. (Titles are hard. I may write about titles one of these days.) Progress on it hasn’t been as fast or immersive as the first volume, but I am working on it, and it is improving.
Some believe that naming a thing gives you power over it. I wouldn’t go quite that far with languishing, but I will say that naming it has given me a strategy for fighting it, a strategy that I lacked before.
Like lockdown, I see light at the end of the languishing tunnel.