Is it hard to roll out of bed these days? Are you having trouble concentrating or accomplishing much of anything? Does it feel like you are muddling through your days?
If so, you are not alone. It’s the dominant emotion of 2021.
It isn’t exactly burnout, because we still have some energy.
It isn’t exactly depression, because we aren’t hopeless.
We know we’ll get to the other side of this pandemic, but life still feels stagnant, blah and flat, like when a carbonated beverage loses its fizz.
Some might say we’ve been “Life Lite” this past year, as it’s missing the sweetness.
Social scientists, however, are calling it something else entirely.
They’re calling it languishing. They report that people are fed up with of being on hold, tired of being physically apart and weary of waiting for the resumption of some semblance of normalcy.
As a result, we are slowly shutting down.
According to New York Times columnist and psychologist Adam Grant, languishing is the neglected middle child of mental health: “It’s the void between depression and flourishing — the absence of well-being. You don’t have symptoms of mental illness, but you’re not the picture of mental health either. … Languishing dulls your motivation, disrupts your ability to focus and triples the odds that you’ll cut back on work.”
The role of ‘flow’
So, what is the antidote to Life Lite or languishing? Flow, say the experts.
Flow is that elusive state of absorption that happens when we’re so focused on something or someone that time, place and self melts away.
“During the early days of the pandemic,” Grant writes, “the best predictor of well-being wasn’t optimism or mindfulness — it was flow. People who became more immersed in their projects managed to avoid languishing and maintained their pre-pandemic happiness.”
They key to entering the flow, Grant says, is having uninterrupted time — which can be hard to get when everyone is cooped up in the same house or apartment. Thus, making time for flow may require setting boundaries.
Maybe we turn off the phone, lock the door to our home office or simply set a “no interruption” schedule (e.g., there will be no interruptions before noon on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday).
Whatever it takes, please give it a try.
The pandemic has involved huge amounts of disruption and loss. It makes sense that we’re feeling its effects.
It is my hope, though, that by acknowledging the shared experience of languishing, we can improve our mental health — both as individuals and as a community — by carving out time for “flow.”
Spring is here, the days are longer, the vaccination rate continues to climb upward, and we can see some glimmer of light at the end of this dark COVID tunnel.
Now’s the time to find an interesting project, a worthwhile goal or a meaningful conversation.
May doing so soothe your quiet despair and frustration and add more fizz back into your life!
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Issues of Faith is a rotating column by five religious leaders on the North Olympic Peninsula. The Rev. Kate Lore is a minister at the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Port Townsend. Her email is katelore@gmail.com.
