Five changes that I am hoping the winds of isolation will blow through
Uitwaaien / (v.) to take a break to clear one’s head / Lit. “to walk in the wind”
For more than a century now the Dutch have been practicing the concept of Uitwaaien; a ‘blow out.’ Not an exorcising of difficulties through inebriation, as the term has been hijacked to mean on these shores, but rather a displacement of ‘bad air’ with ‘good air’ through the act of a walk in the wind. In its bite on a cold day or its breeze on a balmy one, we can find clarity and, crucially, the courage to act on it.
Here, in the winds of isolation, we have the chance to collectively and individually ‘take a break to clear one’s head’. In the new beginning that follows, these are five changes that I am hoping to be a part of.
1. Making nature’s return permanent
On a societal level, nature is growing through the cracks, and we have an opportunity, perhaps a final one, to ensure that our former barricades are not refastened so tightly.
When it comes to the environment, I am conscious but not wholly dutiful. My wanting to be woke ensures I relish my eco-cup claiming 50 pence off my flat white, I am particularly smug when informing an inquisitive colleague that my new trainers are made of old fishing nets, I intermittently forsake meat and try to ensure my client list is ‘purpose-led’. Yet, like too many, the fault lines of my environmental advocacy are flimsy at best. Last weekend I was meant to be at a wedding in the Bahamas, I eat smashed avocado year-round, will chase the England cricket team to all four corners of the planet and have a lifelong membership of a generation who have dined out on consumption.
I’ll leave it to the informed to outline what changes we must heed, and the unwitting aid that this pandemic has offered. However, you need no doctorate to find hope in Wuhan’s birds being heard and trees growing green for the first time, the stars in London no longer solely the taillights of planes, the goats commandeering the streets of Llandudno in Wales, marine life thriving in a tourist-less Thailand and the waters of Venice turning crystal clear.
It is past time to make nature’s return permanent.
2. Offering our bodies respite
It seems indelicate to consider, but among the fortunate majority who are not unwell, it is quite possible to be feeling physically healthier than ever. With our health under threat, the peer nominations of this interlude are not to drink in haste, or douse in icy water, but instead to walk, to run, to push-up and to donate.
The city life I knew before offered little chance for prosperity; short on sleep, long on hustle. Add to that a raft of psychological pressures and the toll was difficult to hide.
Every now and then a photograph would jolt me. Akin to momentarily seeing myself through my mother’s eyes. Who is this impersonator? The tiredness etched in my unfamiliar features. But I felt powerless; delete the photo and carry on.
However, in this extended pause; free of commutes, social swansongs, British blow-outs, societal angst and with the gift of time we have a chance to invest in ourselves. Guilt-free sleep, rest, exercise, reading, writing, baking, bathing, watching, gardening, creating or simply being. We are getting a glimpse of our evolutionary starting point from which the layers of life dragged us. This vitality should be a barometer for when the wheels of society turn again, and our bodies need us more than ever to exercise equilibrium.
3. Revelling in the journey
In my lifetime technology, innovation and societal shifts have opened up possibilities greater than for any of my ancestors. Travel, work, adventure, home, love, family, faith; swipe on, scroll on, the feed is bottomless.
Yet I have found, at a handful of significant moments in my life, this propensity of choice paralysing. Faced by a plethora of paths, my fear prevented me from exploring any. It bred a sense of failure which was compounded by an age of comparison, where every peer or pop star appeared to be swimming while I was, to quote a poem I read often, ‘not waving, but drowning’.
I learnt this week of the term ‘impact bias’ which is our tendency to overestimate the emotional impact of a future event both in terms of its intensity and duration. It struck a chord, a surmising of the reason for my paralysis in decision-making and, conversely, disappointment in the destination.
At the start of this year, if you told me that every plan in my diary was ditched, every social interaction stripped, every country closed, shop shut, restaurant retired, pub garden walled off, sporting fixture abandoned and the health of myself, my loved ones and all human beings, gravely threatened, I would have seen little light. Yet here we are. Stalled but not felled. Spring still dancing around us. A 99-year-old war veteran raising £28+ million for the NHS. Our minds and bodies adjusting to the new normal.
Time and again we underestimate our psychological immune system.
Perhaps it is a job that you have yearned to change, an artistic expression you’ve not been bold enough to share, a truth you’re yet to live, a relationship you wish to invest in or a myriad of other life situations you have let fear stop you from walking forward with.
‘Courage is the not the absence of fear; it is fear walking’ Susan David
In this emphatic global reminder of both our frailty and insignificance, we can find courage and realism for life on the other side. Freeing us to pick a path without equating joy to the journey’s end, choosing instead to find wonder in the footsteps.
4. Investing in life’s most precious commodity
To be alone and to feel lonely are not one and the same. There have been moments in a city of nine million people when I have felt desperately alone, and other times on top of a mountain, with only the clouds for company, where I’ve felt completely at one. The pandemic of loneliness at play in the developed world has been heightened — perhaps even created — by falsified connection. A world where displaying positivity, often in a ruse that masks our melancholy, has become a duty.
In our aversion to loneliness, we pack diaries with different sets of friends, modes of meeting, brunches that back onto lunches, aperitifs that run up to the perimeter line of dinners. One eye on our friend and their needs, the other on our watch and the next source of connection.
Here in isolation, where detachment has grasped us all, and loneliness many, these moments of authentic connection are more meaningful than ever; a shared activity with your household, an unbridled virtual laugh with a friend, a walk to the chorus of the birds, or a message of kindness landing in a juncture of doubt. In our bid to tackle loneliness, it may be prudent for us to carry forward this lesson of connection; less quantity, more quality.
5. The power of collective vulnerability
This pandemic has not discriminated; the future King of the United Kingdom, the Prime Minster, Hollywood stars, Premier League footballers, your next-door neighbour, young, old and many in between. In our shared sense of fragility, we have made room for vulnerability.
I was educated in a system where being candid, particularly as a man, was not an advantageous survival strategy. Sad, confused, anxious, lonely, unhappy, ostracised, hurt, angry; these words of discomfort did not feature in the curriculum. The cost, with suicide the biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK, is hard to comprehend, but thankfully the tide is turning. Through this pandemic it can do so swifter.
Ask a friend how they are in this hiatus and there is breathing room for honesty, and a shared understanding that fosters empathy. We are all experiencing the ebbs and flows of this existence; one day the sun shines, the next there is scant sign of the horizon. Now, however, this rollercoaster of human life need not be placed behind a filter. A change, if it takes hold, which could be a watershed moment for our mental wellbeing.
This ‘blow out’ has been unlike any in history, and in the crisp, often lonely, winds of isolation our minds are slowly but surely clearing. It is in this space of Uitwaaien that our planet, our society and ourselves can make changes that not only sustain us, but also enrich us.