The lockdown journal: Control is an illusion...or is it?
I wake up at the crack of dawn today. It is a peaceful Sunday, I think, and I reach for my phone. The first notification that I open says that a person has tested positive for covid-19 around 200m away from where I stay. I pull up another map based tracker just to confirm that this piece of news is authentic and not rumor mongering. Sure enough, I see a big red boundary drawn around my area and several adjacent ones, with a heading saying Containment Zone followed by a sad smiley.
For a minute, I couldn't believe it. Although things had been taking a turn for the worse all week long and I'd been trying to prepare for such an eventuality, I was taken aback. Like so many other days in the recent past, I lost the urge to get out of bed. I do not want to wake up to this, I thought, and buried my head under the covers. The last thought that I had was: We're almost out of milk. What about the groceries I'd ordered? Would they reach me?
I woke up a couple of hours later, but no, this was not a nightmare that I'd conjured up. I really was in a containment zone. My first response was denial. I looked at the map, and our ward seemed like a huge one geographically--at least 5km. Didn't they say they would put tinier zones(~100m) into containment? Maybe this was just incorrect. I pinged a couple of people I knew, but everyone seemed to think the whole area was under containment. They did not know for sure though. This was the gray zone between suspicion and certainty, and we would know in a day what the authorities decided.
I mournfully looked at the date for resumption to normalcy, and it said 29th of June. A good 21 days away. And mind you, this was if everything went well, if the number of cases went to zero in that period. If not, it would be further extended. I felt really gloomy, and glancing through the news only exacerbated my feelings. Just a few days back, my organization had decided to open its doors to employees. I was contemplating various things: whether it was safe to go to work, how I would travel, what hours I would maintain, how I would balance home and work etc. Then, all of a sudden, this happened. I felt a complete and devastating loss of control over the situation. Just when I thought things were getting back to normal, a return to square one. This is an example of the hope-despair hedonic cycle: When you are in despair, after a while, you stop feeling it, because that becomes your baseline. But when you're feeling hopeful and things don't follow through, that downward jump in the curve feels really exhausting. Of course, I am also aware that in a few days, this will be the new baseline. Yet, the interim is a struggle.
You could ask me: What part of my life would be changed by this? I was already at home. I would still be able to get my essential supplies(hopefully), albeit through alternate channels. How is this any different? It perhaps isn't. But I'm not mourning my freedom to move, I'm mourning the lack of control and agency that I have over my life. I'm mourning several decisions I made in the past, not taking into account this pandemic. I'm mourning the uncertainty of the coming times.To give you another example, several people who were previously working remotely have still found working remotely during the pandemic stressful. One of the contributing factors could well be this: What previously was a choice is now the only option. I am reminded of Mark Twain's insightful distinction between work and play in Tom Sawyer-- how the same task can seem 'play' when one wishes to do it, and 'work' when one is obliged to do it.
With the feeling of my loss of control and struggle came immediate guilt. What was I feeling sad about? I still had a a job. I had a house. I had not lost a family member to the pandemic. I was not running short of food. I was so low on the hierarchy of pain, so what was I cribbing about? What right, if any at all, did I have to crib in the face of so many people's devastating and heartbreaking losses? Then, I took a deep breath and reminded myself of what I've realized after several years of feeling this way: There is no hierarchy of pain/struggle. My struggle with the situation was real, and the last thing I should be doing is to scold myself for not being entitled to the struggle. I needed to let myself feel and acknowledge the struggle, that was the only way I could overcome it.
In psychology, there is an interesting phenomenon called 'learned helplessness'. The experiments that illustrate this go somewhat like this: (I urge you to look this up, because I'm writing this from memory, and there might be a few inaccuracies) A group of dogs were subject to a series of electric shocks. A second control group had the same situation, except that they had a lever to stop the shocks. In a follow-up set of experiments, both groups were subject to electrical shocks, but with a means to stop it. The control group successfully used this to stop the shocks, but the first group did not even try. They had 'learned' to be helpless, that they could do nothing to alter their conditions. It was also observed that the dogs from the first group showed signs of depression, while the other remained normal.
This theory is applicable to humans too. When we start feeling that life is beyond our control, then we lose interest in it. We feel: What's the point of anything I do?
Therefore, I reminded myself of this today: Yes, there are several things in life that are completely beyond my control to alter. But there are things I can choose and control, no matter what. Yes, you heard that right. No matter what. The first and most important of those being, my reaction to any given situation. Yes, the situation is what it is. What do I choose to do? Who do I choose to be? How can I find meaning in this situation? This idea, of course, as you may have guessed, is drawn from Victor Frankl's unforgettable book: Man's Search for Meaning. Quoting directly:
"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
For a minute, I couldn't believe it. Although things had been taking a turn for the worse all week long and I'd been trying to prepare for such an eventuality, I was taken aback. Like so many other days in the recent past, I lost the urge to get out of bed. I do not want to wake up to this, I thought, and buried my head under the covers. The last thought that I had was: We're almost out of milk. What about the groceries I'd ordered? Would they reach me?
I woke up a couple of hours later, but no, this was not a nightmare that I'd conjured up. I really was in a containment zone. My first response was denial. I looked at the map, and our ward seemed like a huge one geographically--at least 5km. Didn't they say they would put tinier zones(~100m) into containment? Maybe this was just incorrect. I pinged a couple of people I knew, but everyone seemed to think the whole area was under containment. They did not know for sure though. This was the gray zone between suspicion and certainty, and we would know in a day what the authorities decided.
I mournfully looked at the date for resumption to normalcy, and it said 29th of June. A good 21 days away. And mind you, this was if everything went well, if the number of cases went to zero in that period. If not, it would be further extended. I felt really gloomy, and glancing through the news only exacerbated my feelings. Just a few days back, my organization had decided to open its doors to employees. I was contemplating various things: whether it was safe to go to work, how I would travel, what hours I would maintain, how I would balance home and work etc. Then, all of a sudden, this happened. I felt a complete and devastating loss of control over the situation. Just when I thought things were getting back to normal, a return to square one. This is an example of the hope-despair hedonic cycle: When you are in despair, after a while, you stop feeling it, because that becomes your baseline. But when you're feeling hopeful and things don't follow through, that downward jump in the curve feels really exhausting. Of course, I am also aware that in a few days, this will be the new baseline. Yet, the interim is a struggle.
You could ask me: What part of my life would be changed by this? I was already at home. I would still be able to get my essential supplies(hopefully), albeit through alternate channels. How is this any different? It perhaps isn't. But I'm not mourning my freedom to move, I'm mourning the lack of control and agency that I have over my life. I'm mourning several decisions I made in the past, not taking into account this pandemic. I'm mourning the uncertainty of the coming times.To give you another example, several people who were previously working remotely have still found working remotely during the pandemic stressful. One of the contributing factors could well be this: What previously was a choice is now the only option. I am reminded of Mark Twain's insightful distinction between work and play in Tom Sawyer-- how the same task can seem 'play' when one wishes to do it, and 'work' when one is obliged to do it.
With the feeling of my loss of control and struggle came immediate guilt. What was I feeling sad about? I still had a a job. I had a house. I had not lost a family member to the pandemic. I was not running short of food. I was so low on the hierarchy of pain, so what was I cribbing about? What right, if any at all, did I have to crib in the face of so many people's devastating and heartbreaking losses? Then, I took a deep breath and reminded myself of what I've realized after several years of feeling this way: There is no hierarchy of pain/struggle. My struggle with the situation was real, and the last thing I should be doing is to scold myself for not being entitled to the struggle. I needed to let myself feel and acknowledge the struggle, that was the only way I could overcome it.
In psychology, there is an interesting phenomenon called 'learned helplessness'. The experiments that illustrate this go somewhat like this: (I urge you to look this up, because I'm writing this from memory, and there might be a few inaccuracies) A group of dogs were subject to a series of electric shocks. A second control group had the same situation, except that they had a lever to stop the shocks. In a follow-up set of experiments, both groups were subject to electrical shocks, but with a means to stop it. The control group successfully used this to stop the shocks, but the first group did not even try. They had 'learned' to be helpless, that they could do nothing to alter their conditions. It was also observed that the dogs from the first group showed signs of depression, while the other remained normal.
This theory is applicable to humans too. When we start feeling that life is beyond our control, then we lose interest in it. We feel: What's the point of anything I do?
Therefore, I reminded myself of this today: Yes, there are several things in life that are completely beyond my control to alter. But there are things I can choose and control, no matter what. Yes, you heard that right. No matter what. The first and most important of those being, my reaction to any given situation. Yes, the situation is what it is. What do I choose to do? Who do I choose to be? How can I find meaning in this situation? This idea, of course, as you may have guessed, is drawn from Victor Frankl's unforgettable book: Man's Search for Meaning. Quoting directly:
"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
This might sound easy, but it takes considerable and consistent effort in reality. Time and again, we must reassure ourselves of control, even in the face of uncertainty. Of calm, in times of anxiety. Of happiness, in times where nothing seems right. We always retain control over our reactions, and we must deliberate and choose them wisely. We must find our calm in the midst of this storm, and help others get there too!
P.S: If you didn't know, here's a short bit about Victor Frankl. He was deported to the concentration camps, where he was held for around 4 years. During that time, he came up with his famous 'Logotherapy', a landmark contribution to psychology. He wife, mother, father and brother died in the concentration camps. When he was finally released, his manuscript on logotherapy was taken away from him. So determined was this man, that he re-wrote the entire thing from scratch, along with the monumental 'Man's Search for Meaning'.
Further reading:
1) Learned helplessness: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/learned-helplessness
2)Hedonic adaptation:https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-science-success/201208/how-keep-happiness-fading
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