If you choose to believe that life will make you suffer...

What a funny world we’re living in right now, it’s pretty bizarre isn’t it? 

But, actually when I take a moment, it’s not all that surprising to me. In a way, I feel like this was bound to happen sooner or later. The lives that we’ve all been living never stop, and if they do so much as pause for even a second we quickly race to find a new distraction, activity, or task. So is it really any wonder that it’s taken something as big as this virus to force us to slow down and reflect on what really matters in life?

To me it feels like God, or the universe, has had enough of us all storming around acting how we want and being arrogant enough to believe that we can control life. We can’t. Life just happens, and that’s what’s being proven so starkly right now. The Corona virus has shattered this pretence that success shields us from harm. It doesn’t matter what your bank balance reads, the house you live in, car you drive, or job you do, this virus doesn’t discriminate. There is no immunity, no cheque big enough to solve all of this. And in a world where we’ve learnt to closely associate success with control, it scares people to realise that, right now no one can successfully control this virus. 

I don’t know about you but (in the words of Regina George) I have definitely felt personally victimised by Corona. On Sunday evening I received the email I’d be praying wouldn’t come… ‘It’s with great sadness that as of 7pm on Monday the 23rd March Orri will be suspending daily in person treatment’. It literally felt like my world was collapsing. That must sound melodramatic, but over the past five months Orri has saved me from myself. I’ve been going there five days a week from 8:30am in the morning to 7:00pm. That’s an awful lot of support, and just like that… Corona’s curtailed it. What’s more, all of this has happened JUST when it felt like things were really beginning to improve. My first thought, “Absolutely classic! Of course this happens now. The universe clearly doesn’t want me to get better”. BUT… reflecting on it now, I can see that is such a defeatist and victimised way to view this situation. 

I’m not saying that it’s wrong to feel angry about the current situation, or that we should feel guilty for feeling so. The anger each of us holds is quite legitimate, and what’s more it should be heard. It was quite understandable for me to be in pieces at Orri on Monday. I sat in a room surrounded by a team of professionals who can normally solve anything, and having to hear them acknowledge that even they couldn’t solve this one is what hurt the most. But, unlike if this had happened a few months ago, despite the chaos, on Monday I refused to go along with anorexia’s whispers, ‘see I’m the only one you can trust, I’ll help you through this’. Instead I voiced my anger, anxieties and ate what I needed to. Yes, I cried (a lot), but not about the food. I cried about the loss, about how scary, unknown and unfair it felt. The key difference is that I didn’t try to ‘fix it’ in the way anorexia wanted me to. 

Right now, I have a choice; I can run back to anorexia and use these uncertain times as my excuse to do so, or I can work hard to keep building on the work that I’ve already done at Orri and use this time to my advantage. I have a choice, I don’t have to be a victim, this doesn’t have to defeat me.

Earlier I was listening to my favourite podcast, ‘How to Fail by Elizabeth Day’, and Mo, the guest speaker highlighted how often humans believe that ‘life will make you suffer’. In relation to the current pandemic, he explained, “Life has a lot of suffering in it if you choose to suffer. Life has suffering in it if you choose to believe life will make you suffer. Reality is, as difficult as the current times are, I promise you most of our listeners are sitting somewhere safe, with all their basic needs met and nothing wrong with their current moment. And if we forget to see that, we realise we’re focusing on the unknown, not what we can do in the moment right now”. Mo is so right. Like I mentioned earlier, we all have a choice in how we respond to this universal pandemic, we could sit arms crossed looking for someone to blame, feeling victimised, “why me, everything goes wrong for me”. OR… we could use it as time to recognise all that we do have, and what really matters in life. 

Perhaps this is a gift? Time to stop, reassess and pause, what am I doing in life right now? Is it helping me become the person I want to be? Am I happy, truly happy? Or am I just trudging along to tick the boxes society defines as ‘doing life’… the job, house, children, relationships, grades, money, fake holidays, fake friends, fake photos. 

What do I really want? What really matters to me?

When the world is put on pause the silence speaks volumes. Whilst none of us had a choice in this awful virus, we do all have a choice in how we respond to it. Life doesn’t make you suffer, your response to it does that…  there’s a difference.