Newspapers and magazines are very keen on the headline βHow I lost 10 kilos – and kept it offβ. They are less keen on the headline βI keep getting fatter and fatter β and thereβs nothing I can do about itβ. Yet thatβs the reality for me, and I imagine for a lot of others. Why not be honest about it?
Some say the media should try to be more positive. Iβm not so sure. Iβd like to see a bit more negativity, just to make me feel better.
What about a headline: βI havenβt had eight hours sleep since I was 18β.
Or: βEvery time I cook dinner, I burn the chopsβ.
Or: βIβve suddenly lost the ability to reverse-park and canβt work out why.β
Iβd read all those articles, with a grunt of satisfaction. βAh good, at least Iβm not the only one.β Aspirational stories are all very well, but they do make you feel like you are the only one going backwards.
Of course, social media has made it worse. No one wants to advertise their own failure, only their successes. People brag when they lose weight, but go silent when they put it back on. Someone might tell you of their success gambling on the horses, or on the stock market, but never when they lose money. And people only post a photo of the souffle when it rises. Never when it slumps.
No wonder thereβs been a rise in anxiety and depression. Other people can reverse-park, cook a chop and sleep through the night, so whatβs wrong with me?
Making matters worse, is the rise in what is called βwellness journalismβ, or to give it a more accurate name: the βhereβs something else to worry aboutβ school of reporting.
There are, for instance, constant articles about how you need to get eight hoursβ sleep, and if you donβt get eight hoursβ sleep, youβll face all sorts of horrors, including dementia, depression and early death. This is not necessarily helpful, not when you wake up at 2am to have a wee and find you canβt get back to sleep because you are so worried about not getting back to sleep, due to the imminent risk of dementia, depression and early death.
I donβt mean to imply that the newspapers run this story every day. Some days, of course, they skip the article about sleep, to make room for the one about how drinking any form of alcohol, in any quantity whatsoever, also leads to dementia, depression and death. Or the one about how just walking past the supermarket cabinet featuring packets of bacon is sufficient to put you in hospital.
There are, for instance, constant articles about how you need to get eight hoursβ sleep, and if you donβt get eight hoursβ sleep, youβll face all sorts of horrors
Perhaps we need a rewrite of that wartime song about positive thinking. In my version, Johnny Mercer would be singing βYou got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the negative, E-lim-i-nate the positive β¦ Donβt mess with mister inbetweenβ.
Certainly, Iβd like to see books that are less upbeat in the βmotivationalβ section of the bookshop. What about some books that admit the ubiquity of failure? Iβd like to see The 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People, The Magic of Thinking Small and How to Lose Friends and Minimise Your Influence.
Silver, in my mind, is the new gold. Itβs fine to come second. Sometimes near enough is good enough.
The most common problem people face these days is anxiety about how they are doing. Half the country is living with a gnawing sense of failure. Wouldnβt it be better if we convinced ourselves that we are doing OK? Yes, Iβve put on five kilos in the last year, but it could be worse. It could have been 10. Iβm a hero when you think about it. And who βsleeps like a babyβ anyway? Not even babies sleep like a baby. We all toss and turn, and then wake up, and then worry that we canβt get back to sleep. I do. Donβt you?
Have these βaspirational thinkersβ never read Seneca? It took three attempts on the day the Roman philosopher was forced to kill himself β he sliced open his veins, which didnβt work, then swallowed some hemlock, which didnβt work, then collapsed bleeding into a steaming bath, which finally did the trick. Seneca, though, took it all in his stride. Heβd spent a lifetime training his mind to think negatively. Leaping from bed in the morning, heβd consider all the things that could go wrong and then β as the day went on β be pleasantly surprised by how well things turned out. And if they didnβt turn out well, at least he had the satisfaction of having predicted the unfortunate outcome.
Certainly, on that day of his death, he must have been really happy: βI just knew today would turn out to be a stinker.β
Is our central problem that we ask too little of ourselves or that we demand too much? To me, the answer is obvious. So Iβd like to propose a toast β a toast to failure, or at least to an acceptance of our various imperfections. It might even involve a glass of shiraz, whatever the experts say, and I wonder if youβd also join me in a cheese board?
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