Was the pre-pandemic world limiting our ability to lead a happier and more fulfilled life?
The idea that the coronavirus pandemic may have been beneficial for some people seems somewhat distasteful. It has caused suffering for many people and fuelled fears of a mental health crisis. Yet amongst this negativity, there’s another, more hopeful, story to tell. The solitude and simplicity of lockdown has been a welcomed break for some people -a chance to take a deep breath and re-evaluate life.
Being a human being can be overwhelming at times, with work stresses, commitments, and financial pressures. Lockdown has allowed some people to let go of life’s stresses and just simply ‘be’ for a while. It allows us to make room for life’s little pleasures, ones that we may have taken for granted before. Lockdown, albeit reluctantly, has made us all slow down. In turn, it’s helped some of us to pause from the hectic velocity of modern-day life. It has even allowed some people time to start a new hobby or get back into things that bring happiness. That has been the case for Gabriella O’neill, a recent graduate from the University of Glasgow.
“I was just going to work and coming home and watching TV”, Gabriella says. “I didn’t feel like I was living up to my full potential or like I had much direction in life”. Throughout lockdown, while spending time at home with family, she has found the time to start practicing self-care and exercising. “I have started meditating every day and got into fitness”, Gabriella explains. “Living out in the country my WIFI is terrible and I can’t even stream Netflix. So I had to find other things to fill my time”. She made the decision to take up cycling and after weeks of long bike rides, decided to test her ability and set off on a 362-mile cycle from Glasgow to Manchester, cycling 6-7 hours a day, for 7 days.
“I liked the simplicity of just having one goal in mind, which was getting to the finish line”, she says. “I wasn’t used to that in normal life where I’d have a million things to do and an endless to-do list”. Gabriella has even found that surrounding herself in nature has reduced her stress levels; “being in nature makes you feel insignificant. In a good way”, she explains. “It makes you realise what’s worth stressing about and that most worries we have are quite trivial. Lockdown helped me to get out of a monotonous routine and start living a life more centred around my happiness”.
“Lockdown helped me to get out of a monotonous daily routine and start living a life more centred around my happiness”
A survey conducted by the workplace mental health consultancy, The Healthy Work Company, showed that 22% of people developed new hobbies during the first lockdown and 35% rediscovered an old one. We all remember the banana bread baking craze! As well as cycling and delicious fruit bread recipes, yoga was also cited as one of the most popular hobbies. Hobbies can be a great way to escape the normal milieu and chaos that seems so prolific in the world right now. When you have a hobby, it can be a safe haven for your mind, a way of making life more interesting, a way of feeling more alive.
An opportunity for change?
The rhetoric of pressure and expectation is the norm for young people in today’s society – work hard, get good grades, join the rat race! It breeds the desire to be flawless and perfect. So, why did the pre-pandemic world have us sacrificing our happiness to seek the unattainable? It’s no secret that such intense pressure creates an impact on young people’s wellbeing.
As a recent graduate myself, going into the scary world of job applications, salaries, and sick pay, I have experienced much of this pressure from university and parents, just to name a few. This, however, isn’t confined just to university students. The Good Childhood Report published this year states how school children in the UK have the lowest level of life satisfaction across Europe, attributed to a particularly “British fear of failure”. Pressure and stress can be helpful and spur us into action but too much of it can be harmful to our health. It’s important to take time out and care for ourselves, to take time away from the desk and just enjoy life a little more.
The Mental Health Foundations states that “now is the time to re-imagine a kinder society that better protects our mental health”. The question is then, why did it take a global pandemic for us to start prioritising our well-being? We have never had a chance like this before; a resolve to change our ways in the post-pandemic world and start prioritising what actually matters, which ultimately is our happiness.
Rosie Jempson
Featured image courtesy of renategrande0 at Pixabay. Image license found here. This image has in no way been altered.