Revd Chris McDermott, Lead Chaplain for the University of Sussex
I recently had a conversation with one of our wellbeing team about the impact of the most recent lockdown on students. It is now widely understood that the pandemic – and especially the lockdowns and isolation entailed – have widely undermined our sense of wellbeing, intensified anxieties, tipped many into states of depression and left us and our families with a sense of disequilibrium and uncertainty. More recently, hopeful noises are being made regarding vaccines and distant lights at the ends of long tunnels.
But still, we live in unsettling times – even apart from discordant discourses in the world of politics on the cusp of Brexit about to hit the fan. And crazy folk (an excessive term, I am sure) screaming against all evidence to the contrary about stolen elections. All the more disquieting when it comes from one of the great modern democracies of the world.
At the best of times we can expect to be confronted by anxiety-inducing situations, wrestle with low-grade depression or suddenly have the carpet pulled under us by unexpected circumstances – even while we are happily chugging along in our lives, work and studies.
I was walking along the beach one day with my stepson. He’s a graduate in theoretical physics but shifted into data science after his own existential brush with a ‘what am I doing with my life?’ moment some years ago. He offered a pithy description of entropy, inspired by the scene. He said that if he were to drop a handful of sand in the water – an impossible thing, as we were walking along Brighton’s pebbled shore – it would disperse and barely effect the clarity of the water. He likened it, of course, to the dispersal of energy in entropy.
I took something different away from that pithy illustration that I have often applied to the practice of mindfulness and forms of meditation. With regular practice, what we are doing is not reducing the amount of anxiety and stress that may confront us along the paths life takes us. Instead, we are enhancing our capacity to absorb the stresses with less and less harmful impact on our states of mind and wellbeing.
Compare the difference between dropping a handful of sludge in a glass of water and then dropping the same amount in a large vat. The larger our capacities, the less our clarity of mind and balance of energy will be unduly disturbed – and states of anxiety remain at appropriate levels. (Yes, we need an appropriate level of anxiety to serve as motivation and offer energy as we work toward goals in life and work.)
I occasionally remind people that the motto of the University of Sussex is ‘Be still and know …’. The motto recognises that our capacity for inner stillness and attentiveness enables optimal levels of learning and the pursuit of our most worthy goals in life. The regular practice of meditation and mindfulness also helps break negative cycles of reaction to anxiety-inducing circumstances and develops our capacity for positive responses to those ‘handfuls of sludge’ occasionally dropped into our lives.
Perhaps consider joining our weekly mindfulness sessions online and pick up some simple but useful practices for developing that sense of grounding and stability amid this wildly weird new world we have now entered: