No I’m not cashing in on all the hype that starts around now, but thinking about what can be a very hard time of year for many people.
Everyone asks, ‘What are you doing for New Year’s Eve?’ and their response to your response (usually in my case, a shame-faced mumble) can lead to crashing feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness. There is a huge amount of pressure on us to have a good time, and the gap between what we’re actually feeling and what we think we should be feeling can make the lead-in to the New Year incredibly miserable.
My friend, Steve, at 39, reckons that the pressure can be intolerable. ‘At this time of year, I just want to go and hide. I’m newly single, missing my children, I’m worried about what my ex-wife is doing, and other single people are trying to get me to go out with them, or sign up for an incredibly expensive celebration somewhere, and I really don’t want to. I can’t afford it anyhow. I can’t bear to be with other couples at the moment – our friends have been really nice and have tried not to take sides, but I can’t bear to see them together. And I’m scared of letting them see that. I’m feeling a lot of pressure and it’s getting worse as the date approaches.’
Not only are there social pressures, but these inevitably will lead to psychological pressures. There is an awful lot of talk about renewal at this time of year. A nauseating amount of pink oozy sweetness flowing from the self-help corner, aimed at ‘enabling’ and ‘transforming,’ ‘facilitating,’ etc etc. You know the kind of thing. (My site is possibly slightly guilty of this.) Makes you want to vomit (unless that happens to be your thing in the first place, in which case it should make you want to not vomit. Or, not to want to vomit.)
So, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, we are to transform ourselves, into better, thinner, kinder, non-chocolate-eating, non-expulsive, non-smoking and non-drinking, non-spending, non-fucking, non-grumpy people. What is it about all these self-help books and articles that makes you want to go out and commit terrible acts, possibly even to the authors of these books?
A great article in the Times yesterday, by Alain be Botton, ‘Seeking words of wisdom,’ considers the fact that in the old days, self-help books, such as those written by Boethius or Marcus Aurelius were a bit more down to earth about what we can expect from life.
I think Marcus Aurelius might possibly have been talking about how to cope with New Year’s Eve, here:
“When you let yourself feel resentment at a thing, you forget that nothing can come about except in obedience to Nature; that any misconduct in the matter was none of yours; and moreover, that this is the only way in which things have always happened, will always happen, and always do happen. You are forgetting, too, the closeness of man’s brotherhood with his kind; a brotherhood not of blood or human seed, but of a common intelligence; and that this intelligence in every man is God, an emanation from the deity. You forget that nothing is properly a man’s own, for even his child, his body, his soul, all come from the same God; also that all things depend upon opinion; also that the passing moment is all that a man can ever live or lose.” (Translation by Maxwell Staniforth.)
I think that Marcus might have been slightly annoying to live with; the sort of guy who always has to have his notebook and pen (ok, tablet and stylus) and I bet he didn’t do much washing-up with that detached attitude. Or maybe, even worse, he did, every now and then, with a sort of set, grim, martyred expression – ‘I’m just being stoical, darling.’ And, he probably made a note of it. To me, it just doesn’t smack of having to do housework and childcare and work and generally deal with stuff that makes a lot of us get just a tad hysterical. But it does pick up on a number of concepts (including ‘flow’) and I am especially drawn to the idea that on the one hand this is the only way, and on the other, the moment is all that is ever gone. It’s sort of like saying don’t worry, and don’t even worry about being happy, or resentful.
Actually Freud said it quite well too: that a worthwhile goal (in his case, the goal of psychoanalysis,) is to transform ‘hysterical misery into ordinary human unhappiness.’
So next time your poor, over-burdened, anxious, and put-upon soul gets told it can be released, or made better if you only buy it whichever product it is for £4.99, just stop for a minute and think about that nice, ordinary, non-aspirational unhappiness. In fact, tell yourself, it’s a lifestyle choice.
One other thing – there is a lovely book, written, by of all people, Sylvia Plath, called ‘The It-Doesn’t-Matter Suit.’ Now this is a great story, just about putting on a magic yellow suit, that’s like a piece of armour. The main man (seven-year-old boy) is called Max Nix, which possibly translates to a big, fat, zero, but we have happiness and yellow clothes and nothingness and families and the construct of her eventual ending all tied around a little, lovely book. Any of you write nicely enough to me, I’ll send you my copy.
‘It is a handsome suit!’ said Paul.
‘Light as a feather!’ said Emil.
‘Bright as butter!’ said Otto.
‘Warm as toast!’ said Walter.
‘Simply fine!’ said Hugo.
‘Dandy!’ said Johann.
‘O my!’ said Max.
That gives you an idea. But the best thing is that although it appears to be bright and merry, we all know there must be a hidden, darker, meaning in there, because of how she eventually went. Her ending kind of eclipses the book’s. As Marcus Aurelius might have said, on being asked what sort of pillar of society he was, ‘Isn’t it Ionic?’
