We all have bad days. Sometimes the bed just wasn’t soft enough, or breakfast wasn’t
delicious enough, or the hot neighbor wasn’t visible long enough, or just whatever it is that
brings the day to a disappointing level of suckiness. As we tell our friends about how gloriously crappy our day was/is/continues to be, there is a common bit of obvious advice people who have no real answers love to give: “just do something to take your mind off of it.”
You know, just get busy.
Thing is, “getting busy” is a surface level solution that’s often applied to core level issues.
In general, a surface level problem is one that is totally outside of you or only involves you in a physical sense. For instance, if your mind is totally bummed about Daniel Kaluuya’s inability to be in a stable relationship on-screen (regardless of race, apparently), then you need to get busy. Just do something. Anything. Please. Except fan fiction, since these things tend to affect you so much.
However, if watching Daniel Kaluuya’s on-screen relationships bring up the existential
dread that you, like him, will never have a loving relationship no matter if you’re a quasi-famous photographer or a warrior leader, then busy work won’t help. This is a core level problem. While the stimulus is borne from an occurrence outside of us, the actual issue springs from a well deep within our innermost awareness of ourselves as an individual entity.
We need to learn the difference.
Navigating mental health can be tricky, in that we make surface level problems core
problems, or we describe our core problems so vaguely they sound like surface problems. This can be from a desire to not bring focus onto what we are truly experiencing, or just not having the proper vocabulary to express how out of whack we are feeling inside. Regardless of the cause, we are handed the tritest, most useless advice ever given in the history of unhelpfulness. The worst part: it kind of works.
Let’s use loneliness as our example today.
If you’re talking to a friend and express loneliness as the current dragon you’re battling,
they’ll give you some variation of the get busy trope. The modification being to get busy where there are other people getting busy so you all can be getting busy together and therefore you won’t be lonely. Easy. Yet, we know that being alone and feeling lonely are two very different pathologies in need of different treatment. Alone means not surrounded by people. Lonely means not connected to people. Alone is solved by people. Lonely is solved by purpose.
I was feeling lonely the other day. I couldn’t shake it. When I did things to get my mind
off of myself (got busy), there was relief. However, it was temporary. The loneliness was waiting for me as soon as I was done, if it ever truly left me at all. Let me restate it clearly for the people in the back: taking your mind off a problem does not solve the problem. Because I love metaphors: taking Ibuprofen may alleviate your headache, but you still have the flu AND the headache will return after the medicine wears off. Got it?
So, what did I do for my loneliness this time around? I gave blood. The daughter of a
sister of a friend will have surgery so a blood drive was held in her name. By participating I
reconnected with that friend, and felt connected to the child because it was for her, and felt
connected to the sister because I’m a parent and could more viscerally empathize with the
worry she is likely experiencing. My feeling of disconnectedness was resolved. My loneliness loss that battle.
There’s still a war, though.
In today’s society there’s little room for nuance. Luckily, I don’t fit in with society, so strap
in. I am NOT advocating for someone who is questioning their very existence to go join the
Peace Corps. The reason I say this is that “getting purpose” doesn’t always have to be some large gesture to society. Depressed people are often accused of being too inwardly focused, ironically by people we tend to do stuff for and with all the time. But that’s another blog post for another day. My recommendation is to find something that directly speaks to your core level problem. If you, like me, are feeling disconnected, find an activity that reconnects you to anyone (or forms new connections). If you, like me, are feeling unworthy, find an activity, or book, or person, or pet that makes you feel worthy whether. Hell, you may come to find that worthiness doesn’t even matter to them, they just love you anyway. If you, like me, feel in your core that people will reject you because of [blank], then find purpose in doing the thing that counters that blank. If it’s weight, work out; if it’s looks, get a makeover; if it’s personality, stop being an asshole.
But you have to find it, identify it, and counter it. This is purpose. This is intent. This is
living. THIS IS SPAR…sorry, got caught up in the emotional build up.
What it both is and is not: just getting busy. Being busy simply for busy’s sake yields no
actual results. If you are unable to identify your struggle, there are professionals for that. Seeing a therapist doesn’t have to be a lifelong commitment (and expense). You can ask them for 1-3 sessions or so as necessary to assist you in sorting through the jumble. But you have to get busy doing the work of being proactive in the treatment of your symptoms and, ultimately, finding your cure(s).
Before I ride off into the sunset, I should acknowledge something. Hopefully, you noticed
now many times I included “like me” three paragraphs ago. That’s not literary flare. I got more than one problem. We all do. You are not the only one who doesn’t have only one. While sometimes I’m only dealing with one, sometimes it’s more than that giving me problems at the same time.
Remember people, it’s a big river. We will all drown if we don’t learn to tell the rescue
team where we are. Then, hopefully, one day we can GET OUT.
Shit, now I got Daniel Kaluuya’s bad relationships back in my head…
