Yesterday I was speaking to a friend who told me she doesn’t want lockdown to end. She has become used to working from home and shopping and socialising remotely. As she spoke, I couldn’t help remembering that this was the same friend who in March had been saying how much she hated the idea of working from home, that she wouldn’t be able to cope without going shopping in person, and that she couldn’t imagine being at home all the time with her young children.
The things she said she was worried about were exactly the opposite in each case, but the thing she was really worried about was the same: change. Most people are resistant to change, it’s a well-known part of human nature, even if it doesn’t necessarily make sense. Change is just as capable of being good as it is of being bad, but perhaps it comes down to the old wisdom of ‘better the devil you know’.
It’s not unusual to be worried or angry about a restructure at work for example – in fact a family member went through one of these recently and described the extreme resistance to the change from colleagues, despite many of them being perfectly happy with it after it had taken place. A large part of the reason for our resistance to change is fear of the unknown – in a work context this might be fear of losing your job, or finding yourself with a less amenable boss.
This got me thinking about types of change I don’t find myself resisting. Moving house, changing job, getting a new pet, these are all exciting and positive changes, in part because we choose them ourselves. That is the crucial difference – the changes we don’t feel resistant to are the ones we believe can control. But the reality is that the outcome of these changes is never really guaranteed – nor, when it comes to it, is the outcome of every day we live. Anything could happen, at any time.
In her memoir 'The Rules Do Not Apply' American journalist Ariel Levy tells the heartbreaking story of how the life she worked so hard to piece together dissolved into tragedy caused by factors outside of her control. She writes in the introduction: “Until recently, I lived in a world where lost things could always be replaced. But it has been made overwhelmingly clear to me now that anything you think is yours by right can vanish, and what you can do about that is nothing at all. The future I thought I was meticulously crafting for years had disappeared, and with it have gone my ideas about the kind of life I’d imagined I was due.”
The book does not have a simple happy ending, as there is no easy fix for Ariel’s suffering. However, there is a sense of building resilience over the course of the memoir. She loses her house, her partner and her job in one fell swoop, and the only thing Ariel has left is herself.
As we’ve discussed before, a good tactic for coping with big changes and feelings of helplessness is to create small areas of life where you can feel in control in a healthy way, such as keeping a certain part of your house in good order. However, there are still going to be huge areas of your life outside of your control, and that is not just true of the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic. You can adapt to changes whether you control them or not. In these cases, it’s important to remember that the one thing which will remain constant is yourself. Both your body and mind will evolve of course but the essence of you, what makes you you, can weather any storm.