COVER STORY

SO DONE WITH 2020

And so much to look forward to. Queen Elizabeth described 1992, the year Princess Diana died so tragically, as “annus horribilis”. 2020 was a global annus horribilis. Will our hopes of the New Year being annus mirabilis come true?

Image credit: NEWS CANADA.

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

A New Year always feels like a fresh new start. Clichéd as it may be, it brings with it the opportunity to reveal a new! improved! version of oneself.

Hence all the resolutions we make. To lose a few bad habits, to gain a few good ones.

All those empty squares on the calendar are a blank canvas, an invitation fill them with the colours of all meaningful and fun things we look forward to each year. To plan ahead for birthdays, anniversaries and festivals.

This past year though, went by with a cloud of worry and stress enveloping most special occasions. One looked pretty much like the one before and the one after. The way we were is not the way we are. The way we celebrated life events this past year is not the way we celebrated before.

Ramesh Prabhu celebrated his birthday in November thus: Takeout meals for lunch as well as dinner, calls from friends and family, an assignment completed during the day, and The Undoing on Disney/Hotstar in the evening.

The veteran media professional with more than 20 years of experience as a production journalist in India and Dubai taught journalism and writing skills to master’s students at a media college in Bangalore until recently. He now enjoys the challenge of working on a new assignment each day as a copy-editing freelancer and editor on contract. “I like to think of every article as a daily crossword puzzle that I need to solve by examining the clues closely. And, finally, when I submit the article that I have tended, I like to think, with love and care, I feel deeply satisfied.”

 Ramesh lives and works in Bangalore. He also (full disclosure) just happens to be an old friend.

Sounds like my kind of day, I wrote back. “Except for the assignment part – why are you such a workaholic? I would have taken the day off!”

“I would definitely have taken the day off, Shagorika, if we had planned our usual celebration – a lunch-and-movie date!” he responded. “But that is not an option at the moment. So... As for being a workaholic, remember my post engageentertainenlighten.blogspot.com/2010/09/if-you-love-what-you-do-is-it-work.html? You had posted a comment too!”

Did I say he’s an old friend? An old friend with a great memory and a great capacity for cross-referencing conversations and exchanges years later.

He used to publish a blog for his students, and this post he wrote about is one dated September 2010.

In it, he described how he tries to encourage his students to find enjoyment in what they do, giving his own example.

I get to do what I love – at Commits, at home, even at the gym  – because I love what I do. And I try to enthuse Commit-scions into feeling the same way about their assignments, their projects, their  “work”.

He quoted others on the subject. HK Shivdasani who wrote in DNA that work-life balance is humbug. That if your work is your passion then you won’t find the need to strike a work-life balance because you’ll enjoy every moment of it.

He gave examples of legends like Lata Mangeshkar, Sachin Tendulkar, and others who “enjoyed their work so much that no other activity was as much ‘fun’. They never knew or needed to practise ‘work-life balance’.”

Ramesh Prabhu “at work” during a laughter challenge at Commits, Bengaluru, India.

I couldn’t agree more. After all, that’s what I said in my response to his post – that he cleverly quoted back to me in defence of his “working-birthday”.

That is what we have also always told both our sons. To find a career in a field they are passionate about, not one that is ‘in’ or ‘hot’ or because it pays the most. That because we so love what we do, it’s not like work at all.

“It’s not a grind when you work long hours or without a break. Take today, for instance. I’d started out thinking I’d catch up on some reading (Arrival City by Doug Saunders), watch Peepli Live and take an afternoon nap. Well, guess what. A man from Kolkata who is cycling around the world and was supposed to get into town next week got in a few days early – today. Since he is here only for a day-and-a-half, there went my lazy Saturday. But I had such fun talking to him that it didn’t seem like work.”

Rereading my response I wonder, was that really 10 years ago? How times flies when you are having fun working!

Not much has changed and yet so much has. I still thoroughly enjoy what I do, but have also learned that one needs to maybe force oneself to take time off, and this applies specially to those who work from home. Even more so now with all the restrictions on going out and socializing. There’s the danger of one endless day blurring into another. So many of us are stressed and we don’t even know why.

A young mother says she feels on the verge of crying several times a day, though there’s no reason for her to feel so. “I’m grateful all of us are safe,” she asserts. “It’s just that everyone is home all the time. My kids are enrolled in online classes, my husband is working from home, my in-laws live with us. Earlier, I got a little me-time when I went to drop the kids to school or ferried them to and from extracurricular activities. Now I feel I’ve nowhere to run and I feel awful thinking like that. I have a great family, but I feel I can’t even sit down for a quiet cup of tea without feeling guilty that I should be doing something for someone.”

Stress will do that to you when you are ‘on call’ all the time – creep up while you are busy assuring yourself all is well, pulling a Pollyanna, counting your blessings and giving thanks for all the things so many are deprived of. But stress doesn’t come unannounced. There are signs, if we teach ourselves to read them.

In an article in the Toronto Star dated November 7, 2020, Betsy Powell quotes Steve Joordens, a  psychology professor at UofT: Chronic stress begins to affect the way our brains function. “Less blood flows to the frontal lobe which handles abstract thought and more goes to the limbic system which handles emotion.” This can make focusing on complex activities such as reading or planning meetings more difficult. It can also make it easier to feel overwhelmed by anxiety.

In Volume 11 of Mind Over Matter published by Women’s Brain Health Initiative, I read that the brain benefits from downtime. Psychologist Scott Bea was quoted as saying, “Our brains are like sponges. They can only soak up so much information before they are saturated, then they have to dry out a bit”.

In that same article, they define downtime. “What many consider ‘free time’ (e.g. time away from children, work, and homework) is not necessarily ‘downtime’... If you are processing information, then your brain is working (as opposed to resting).”

The article lists “mindless” tasks that require the brain to do less that can help achieve downtime. These include daydreaming, meditating, napping, mowing the lawn, weeding, planting, and other yard-work activities, running, walking, cycling, swimming and other independent exercises, cleaning, vacuuming and dusting.

I share this with my brother, telling him again how weeding is my preferred destresser. He tells me that Bill Gates (or was it Warren Buffet?) finds doing dishes, washing them by hand, meditative.

Getting outside for some fresh air whenever possible is one of the “mindless” activities that are very good for both body and soul. Image credit: NEWS CANADA.

As we hunker down for winter, what does the year ahead look like? With what we saw as “normal” yet to appear over the horizon, will we spend the next few months focused solely on the vaccine, placing our hope in it to set us free, or will we learn new ways to greet the new year with anticipation of new wonders in store?

When we were new in Canada, I found the long winters hard to deal with. Spring, summer and fall appeared to be scrunched into a few short months, the rest being given over to the cold and the dark. I’d check the time of sunset in the newspapers every day – this was before our phones carried all such information – and greedily count the incremental, by-the-minute increase in daylight hours after Christmas as we climbed back towards spring. Then I gave myself a good talking-to. I may not be a “winter person” but if I was going to live here, I couldn’t hibernate for six months either. I had to find ways to not just survive winter but to actually be, well, if not exactly happy, at least okay with it. I began to look for outdoor activities that we could participate in. Two kids who are learning to skate and build snow forts and two adults who venture out very tentatively in the cold can still find things to do together. We signed up the boys for Scouting where they learned astonishing things like camping outdoors in winter. We found nature hikes and walks that we could take, bundled up in so many layers that I grumbled I walked like an astronaut in a spacesuit.

But it got better. Not overnight, of course. Not even over one winter. I still wouldn’t describe myself as a fan of winter. I still wish it was shorter, that it would behave like a season, come and do its thing and be gone in three months rather than hanging around for closer to six, but gradually, I went from dreading the season to seeking and finding beauty in the stark winter landscape. In participating in Scouting activities – no, not winter camping – but mom-friendly ones like helping to sell Christmas trees while clutching a mug of hot chocolate.

And I learned that I really enjoy walking. In all weather. Nothing like a brisk walk to clear the cobwebs of the mind. And to sprout new ideas. When I walk, snatches of old songs come to me, linked to movies watched with my mother or with old friends. I come home and look them up and put some on a list of movies I’d like to watch again, as a refresher course. Okay, so maybe that’s not letting my mind “idle” in the strictest sense of the word as advised by experts, but I believe it is, in a manner of speaking. Because these ideas only come to me when I walk (or garden), letting my mind float free. At other times, my mindspace is filled with an ever-lengthening to-do list.

I liken this to what farmers do when they let land lie fallow for a season to rejuvenate the soil for a new crop.

Ambulando solvitur, as the Latin phrase goes. It is solved by walking.

A talking-to works sometimes and sometimes it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, we have to learn to reach out for help from friends and neighbours who have walked this path before, and  from those who are trained to help us. Keeping in mind at all times something my friend and neighbour Dorothy used to say. “Remember, honey, you are not the Salvation Army, you are just one woman”. That’s what we are, individuals dealing with unforeseen circumstances, dealing with things the like of which we’ve never experienced before. It’s natural to feel overwhelmed occasionally.

Toronto mayor John Tory announced a Welcome TO winter plan to help get more of us out there in the fresh air. This includes snow loops on city-owned golf courses for hiking, free skating at outdoor rinks, tobogganing, guided walking programs and more. All, while reminding everyone to wear masks and practise social distancing. See? It can be done with a little planning.

In the episode titled The Balmoral Test in the current season of The Crown, Margaret Thatcher escapes from a “stalking expedition” with the Queen – which is not what it sounds like, they are out looking for a stag that was shot at and injured by the neighbouring landowner – saying she will go back and change into more sensible clothes. Back at Balmoral Castle, she loses herself in work she has brought with her. Princess Margaret strolls by and asks her why she is sitting at her desk when she should be out with the rest, having fun.

“You do realize this is supposed to be a bank holiday?”

It is hard to have a holiday when the country is in its current state, says Thatcher.

“The country has been in a state before. It will doubtless be in a state again,” responds princess Margaret. “One learns, when one has the benefit of experience, that sometimes time off is the most sensible course of action.”

Thatcher remains unimpressed. “I’m not best suited to time-off. It gives me no pleasure.”

The Princess has the last word, however. “It might give you something more important than that – perspective.”

While you might wonder, as I did, at a member of the royal family who was born into privilege doling out advice to a woman who had earned her position, she did have a point.

Music, whether you play an instrument or enjoy listening to one, is a great way to unwind. Image credit: AKSHAR DAVE on Pexels.

Many, many years ago, one of my husband’s colleagues used to say, “I’m off to Guatemala!” when he stepped out for a short break. The back story being that he had worked with someone who once left the office saying he was going to pick up cigarettes and the next they heard from him, he was in Guatemala. He’d had enough of the routine, of the grind, and made a break for it. Which might have been rather a dramatic way of expressing the desire for change, but with many  of us reaching that point, I am also reminded of an old ad.

Have a break, have a KitKat was a line used to promote the chocolate. That may or may not be your treat of choice, but do take a break.

Take a deep breath, gain a new perspective!

Happy New Year!