A Happy New Year?
Wishing people a happy new year has felt a bit hollow this time around. For a brief moment it felt good to leave 2020 behind, but it was quickly eclipsed by the news of a third lockdown, and although it was expected, it made many feel deflated and scrambling to organise themselves. Then the awful numbers of death began to roll in, only topped by the unbelievable scenes from Washington on Wednesday night.
It is hard to not doom-scroll as our news habits are called, but it has been even harder to find something to be positive about in these dark times. But an old blog post from Oliver Burkeman (my favourite thinker of the moment) helped reshape the feeling of greyness and doom. In the blog titled 'the news is not your life’ written during the frantic days leading up to the US election, he pointed out that in recent years our psychological centre has shifted from ourselves to big world events, which we have no control over or input in. And this decentering is not good for us;
“It was as if more and more people were shifting their psychological centre of gravity, so the news was somehow realer to them than the concrete world of their work, family and friends. I don't just mean that they were "spending too much time online" or "addicted to social media" (although they were, and we are). I mean that the realm of presidencies, referendums and humanitarian crises had become the main drama of their daily lives, with their actual daily lives relegated to the status of a sideshow.
To stay sane, you need at least one foot planted firmly in your world: the world of your job and neighborhood, that letter you need to mail, the pasta you're cooking for dinner, the novel you're reading with your book group, and that guy on your street who never cleans up after his dog – the world where you can have an effect, even if I've admittedly yet to have one with the dog guy”.
One way to be rooted in our worlds is to practice hakarat hatov. It means to ‘recognise the good’ or gratitude as it is often translated. It is about becoming aware of the good that is already in your life. It does not negate the difficulties you are experiencing, but it shifts our psychological centre by focusing us on the here and now, on our own lives and those of our loved ones, and it helps us remember to be aware of the good. It can be gratefulness for a warm home during this cold spell, having someone else empty the dishwasher or make dinner, calling an old friend, a drawing, or just a cup of tea.
So now, instead of checking the news the minute I’ve silenced the alarm, I spend a few minutes every morning thinking about what I can be grateful for, and then at night looking back over the day, I reflect on what in the day has helped me to ‘hakarat hatov’ - recognise the good. This brief little ritual helps frame the day and stops us from anchoring our souls in the news, but rather in ourselves and our world.