Recent reporting in the NY Times describes a state of "behavioral anhedonia," a reduced ability to take pleasure in activities. The opposite of "hedonism," you might say. After all the time and anxiety of the long pandemic, the loss of income and loved ones, and all the uncertainty, many people feel they've become dimwitted approximations of their former selves and got lethargic, show a lack of interest in new activities, and experience a reduced ability to take pleasure in life.
That's a pretty apt description of my state of mind for most of 2021. Recall that in July 2019 I had retired from a long career and by the time the pandemic quarantine got really started in March 2020, I had already been practicing a sort of austere solitude for some nine months. And then in late October 2020, the tree fell on my house, increasing my anxiety and feeling of helplessness as I struggled to get contractors and insurance payments arranged.
By January 2021, it all started getting to me - the social isolation of the pandemic, the anxiety over finances on a fixed income as I faced six-digit repair costs, the increased awareness of my own mortality reflected by dangling gutters and plywood patches on my ceilings. The physical state of the house was a pretty good metaphor for my psycho-physical self.
I fell onto an anhedonic fog of insomnia, joyless television watching, and mindless distractions. I ate poorly, exercised infrequently, and found it difficult to get along with the contractors trying to repair my home. For a while there, I even stopped posting to this blog. You can consider the majority of what I did post here between January and March 2021 as expressions of an anhedonic mind.
But I absolutely did not want to move out of the house and back to the Unsellable Condo in Vinings while they completed the remaining repairs. Not only was it all the myriad little tasks associated with packing and hauling one's belongings, but it also felt like acquiescing to the demands of an uncaring, unfeeling universe. I looked forward to it less than you might look forward to root-canal dentistry. .
But it turns out it might have been the single best thing for me. The change of scenery broke the soulless rhythm of anhedonic life. Counterintuitively, having less to do and fewer distractions here at the UCV has made me more mindful and more involved in my own life. For example, if all I have to do for the next five minutes is peel and eat an orange, say, then my mind is fully engaged in the peeling and the eating of that orange. It's not something I'm doing as the television's airing the Chauvin trial, a video game is loading on the computer, and I'm simultaneously perusing Facebook on my iPhone.
I have no tv here and internet access is tricky at best (mobile hotspot created with my phone) and there's definitely less to do any given day here compared to back home. I only moved three major pieces of furniture (my bed, a sofa, and a kitchen table), so there's also less places to do things. But the move has snapped me out of anhedonia and I'm sleeping better, which means I can meditate better, and I'm also eating better, walking further and along new routes, and generally feeling better than I have in months.
What a surprise.
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