Langishing

Most days I seek out a TED talk, stumbling across that of a Wharton professor who described me quite well as a person who has been languishing for much of the pandemic, if not before.  He noted his NY Times article in the talk, so I read that afterwards, this time not blocked for lack of a subscription.

 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/well/mind/covid-mental-health-languishing.html

The pandemic has taken me through stages, depending on what I had to do or wanted to do.  For a while I probably met medical criteria for loneliness, though less so now.  I don't think I was ever despondent but often without purpose and hard to get motivated to leave My Space for more purposeful activity.  I did not feel sad or angry, even when I should have.  More numb or Stoic.

The talk and article, which the author had experienced, outlined remedies, some of which I had begun to figure out before understanding what had overcome me.  He advocated finding activities that had three features.

• MASTERY 
• MINDFULNESS 
• MATTERS

For him, that came from assembling family time to play a video game with relatives in other cities.  For me some of what has made me feel a little better has been my success at maintaining a treadmill schedule.  I now exercise at a level not possible when I made the commitment to do it.  I remain inner focused on a tune, with scheduled glances at a preset timer.  And I would like to feel more energetic, so the effort matters.

My self-expression has not gone as well, meeting mindfulness and matters, but not yet with the mastery.  In fact, it's still a project overdue in its formation.  I do very well responding to what others have conveyed, not nearly as well assembling and expressing my own thoughts or experiences.  It's also not yet Flow, that effortless feeling which keeps me focused on nothing else.  I still work with a timer, as I do with the treadmill, and have gotten better at not watching it, though not as well at letting it run to zero to define each session.  But it does capture the three M's.

He did not talk about giving up situations that promote languishing, for me the sanctuary of my synagogue on Saturday morning.  It currently and for a while has lacked all three M's, a place at which mastery is neglected, I'm not offered anything of importance to do or creativity to accomplish, and end results that do not seek to generate the excellence that really matters.  I do have a more challenging assignment for Pesach which may help.

Now that I have a better grasp of where my psyche has taken me and the better places it could be, I should be able to at least move in the direction of Flow, if not actually achieve it.