Tag: be kind

Lockdown Journal contribution – 12 June

Shadwell Basin

I had a longish walk today from Limehouse Basin, along the canal and into Highbury, Hackney and Homerton, before returning to Limehouse via the Lea Valley and Bow Docks. Despite half of my family being east Londoners much of this was new territory to me. Whilst I walked and took a couple of pictures, I thought about feelings, both physical and emotional. 

Uppermost in my mind was ‘fatigue’. I walked about 20km which is far from unusual for me in this lockdown phase, and far from taxing, but I noticed that I was quite tired as I approached my home. But it is mental fatigue and lockdown fatigue that I found myself considering.

For good reasons our news coverage is now highlighting issues around Black Lives Matter protests, a number of sensitivities around the lives of trans men and women, and the return of Premier League football. The issue of the merits and demerits of many public statues and monuments is getting more attention than the daily virus-attributed deaths, even though they are still in treble figures. 

It suits the government, but is it partly to do with fatigue? Are we all a little tired of talking about ‘essential worker heroism’? Are we tired of ‘staying alert’ and ‘saving lives’? Are we tired of believing that anyone is ‘following the science’? We certainly seem tired of holding our government to account. There is little evidence that the virus is being contained, but we get boosterish headlines about reducing the 2m distancing rules and about a reopening of parts of the hospitality industry. 

I wonder if we are all just a little too tired to think in the ways we thought just three months ago. Essential workers just seem to be low paid workers, once more. Antagonisms about race and about ‘free speech’, and old debates over so called ‘political correctness’ are regaining oxygen. Three months ago, we were talking about ‘Be Kind’ social media messaging and about being grateful to front line worker heroes. 

Bartlett Park

I sense a pervasive feeling of weariness. I hope that is wrong. We know that we have much more to do as a society to contain the virus and to rebuild a shattered economy. That will need strong leadership and a community spirit and a willingness to come together. It requires energy, invigoration and fresh thinking. I hope that protesters protest; that opposition parties hold the government to account; that citizens remember the bravery of front line workers, including the police, which is getting rather maligned currently and that we all behave wisely, so that the NHS does not get overwhelmed by any prospective ‘second spike’. I hope, but I am sceptical. Or just fatigued.  

Who’s Zooming Who?

“Zoom” class

A little over a week ago a seminar leader at a British Psychoanalytic Association meeting that I was attending said, “we may have to go online, to Zoom our next meeting”. “Zoom?” I asked, perplexed. “It’s like Skype, only with better encryption”, she replied rather airily. “Oh”, I thought and kept it private that not only had I never heard of Zoom, but though I had heard of Skype, I was a Skype-virgin.

Within days my university was suggesting that next semester’s lectures and seminars would be online and would probably use Zoom. My own personal analysis sessions came to an end and after a couple of telephonic sessions over WhatsApp, were initiated over a Zoom connection from the start of this week. We have had three sessions. Two went well, but one was no good because she could not hear me, even though the video worked. I had changed nothing and I checked various mute and settings buttons but to no avail. This may be a precursor of a lockdown lifestyle. Where once I would have inconsiderately cursed, asked a younger, brighter colleague what to do, then called the anonymity of a ‘help desk’ at work; now I have to figure it out for myself. It may be a good thing.

I saw a wonderful twitter comment

Jenna Omeltschenko (@JenChenko) Tweeted:

“Last week I didn’t even know what Zoom was and now I live here. I live in the Zoom”.

and I started to think about what it could do for me. I have one child in Manchester, but she is fortunate that she is sharing her living arrangement with the boyfriend. I share a flat with my eldest and we have been keeping ourselves grounded for a while now, because her boyfriend is unwell with the fever and coughing symptoms. No damage to our sanity yet. My son is not so fortunate. He went into early self isolation because his flatmate was coughing, although appears not to have been afflicted and has gone home to the US, subsequently. As a result he has not seen his girlfriend for several days and is now resigned to weeks, perhaps longer, alone.

I was worried about what that might mean for his mental wellbeing and so we started a regular daily call. We decided, as new Zoom users, to schedule our own meeting together so that he had some human face time. As it is, he and some former schoolfriends had used the ‘houseparty’ app to get their connection a little more ‘real’, and so, he has not been totally starved. However, we thought that a ‘family meeting’ might work and I asked his mother to join in. My eldest was busy working, and on her own conference call, but this afternoon we had a four-way video meeting via Zoom – and very enjoyable it was too. Given how technophobic both my ex and I tend to be, this represented a huge triumph and I could tell she was as chuffed that it all worked, as I was.

When I have my psychoanalysis sessions, my analyst and I greet each other cordially over the video screen, but then turn the cameras off and I start my free associating and she provides the occasional interpretation. However, the seminar I did with my fellow students at the BPA last week was very interactive; having multiple contributors is both a benefit and a distraction. I had not yet worked out how to display all the speakers at once on split screens and so, I was only seeing the individual speaker pop up in front of me each time. But I have cracked this now.

Given how psychoanalysis is a window into the darkened interior of our unconscious, this window on window on window structure had me thinking about all sorts of implications and insights. How would Freud have regarded it? What Zoom does, in that context, is gaze in on people’s interiors, psychically and literally. I gather that Zoom veterans put up some sort of virtual background to their screen so that they do not reveal the untidiness of their home, or the datedness of their decor! But how we react to the gaze of the camera and to seeing several contacts at once, including our own face is different to how we would be in a meeting in an office where we have little idea what our own expression is revealing. We reveal ourselves to ourself in a way we cannot in the physical world.

It will not be the only device or tool that becomes familiar to us in the current circumstances. We may find we cannot live without it, just as once we would never have felt we needed social media. In an unrelated event, a friend and ex-colleague messaged me today via Facebook. He had decided to make a weekly connection with his many friends for a sort of ‘check-in’. It is a very good idea. The busyness of our lives means we often feel we do not have time to interrupt others, and that they may not welcome it, but time is going to stretch now, and filling it with connection, and small gestures of kindness and sociability will be good for all parties.

Who's Zoomin' Who? - Wikipedia
Who’s Zooming Who – Aretha

Anyway, one of the keys to enjoying living is to keep being open to new experiences and to keep learning. Here’s to Zoom(ing). I shall be using a good deal more. Let me know if you have had a positive or a negative Zoom experience. I am going to “live in the Zoom”.