Here’s to a Difficult New Year

“Life is difficult,” wrote psychiatrist Scott Peck. The three words that begin the well-loved book, the road less travelled, are easy to pass by in our search for an easy life that resides in our fantasy. Fantasies are imaginations we entertain, for good sometimes, to escape from the reality of the drudgery of our daily lives. How glorious are our lives lived in fantasy island? Such lives come with ease and magic. While fantasy can calm wrecked nerves, it can also lead to disillusionment when our desired lives do not come true. The stuff that makes religious discourses around whether prayers are answered or delayed.

We are all prone to such magical thinking, believing that our lives will be happier if we use the correct formulas and do the right things. Children are masters of magical thinking, also known as manipulation. Through trial and error, children reckon that they can manipulate their relationships and environment to meet their needs. What about adults, one might ask? We all learned early in our lives that patterns appear to serve our needs, we keep. Even when the evidence for such is only by association, we keep the practice as long as it seems to work in our interest. After all, we survive the difficulties of being alive through fantasy, especially when the going is tough.

Life is difficult, not only for some of us. Life is difficult for all of us and everyone. We barely survive each day. When life’s adversities come rolling towards us, the temptation is to think that it is only happening to us, our kind and our tribe. That is why suffering isolates. The tendency in such moments is to believe that other people have it easy. We think they are having it easy because they have a working formula. Our lives would be as easy as theirs if only we discovered their recipe. We then go on the search for their secret formula. We read every self-help book that promises an easy life. We regress.

We are all good people until we are under stress. Stress is inevitable as long as we have breath. Perhaps we need to be more forgiving when we act more petite than our best selves under pressure. Who of us has never experienced personality regression? In psychology, regression is a defence mechanism Anna Freud proposed whereby the ego reverts to an earlier stage of development, usually in response to stressful situations. Regression functions as a form of retreat, enabling a person to psychologically go back in time to a period when the person felt safer. We might feel safe when we entertain earlier magical thinking when faced with adversity. Perhaps it is time to fantasise until we feel strong enough to return to the reality of miserable living.

As the years draws to a close, the air is full of attempts at redesigning our lives in response to the year we have had. It is all fun and games until we realise that the idea of a neatly packaged year is not complying with our fantasised desires. A year is an arbitrary idea that has no bearing on life as it unfolds—attaching our fantasies to the calendar only works to soothe our woes—leading us to the danger of hurting ourselves when our imaginations do not materialise. I am not saying that we cannot strategise for the year ahead. We need to have a simple plan for our lives as long as we know that life is not all in our terms. The difficulty of living is that we need to hold at once what is within our control and the unpredictable vast amount of it.

In evaluating the year ending, what if we celebrated that life has been generous to us, not because we survived the difficulties it presented. We can celebrate that life was what it was meant to be, harsh and uncaring about our intellectual orientations. Life kept its promise of being challenging, and we were present where it happened. If we reframe life as such, we might be excited at the prospect of the new year. We cannot expect the new year to be different. It will be tough; that’s what life always is.

What if, in making resolutions for the next year, we formed a pact for ourselves that we shall dance and laugh in the face of adversity? To wish that we get an easier life in the new year is wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is a cognitive dissonance that we know will not be genuine. We will be disappointing ourselves when life will be what it always has been, problematic. Life is consistent with being difficult. Our intellectual attempts at having it different are irrelevant in the face of life. It will save us a lot of emotional, psychological and social heartache to embrace the challenges life presents. I think it is alright to regress every once, as long as we catch ourselves in our regression. The work of being an adult is not to wish that life were any easier but to face life as it evolves. Probably, if we take life on its terms, we might find the humour and absurd in it. We could ride the waves as they break on us with tears and courage.

Because life is hard, we might find the balm in companionship. We might want to commit to forming partnerships that work in the new year. The internet comes in handy if we cannot find anyone in our immediate environment to develop fellowship. You might find a therapist who could accompany you on your ride. Whatever you do in the next year, find support. Be part of a community or form one because it is an arduous trip around the sun when going it alone. Solo life-enterprise leaves you vulnerable to perpetual regression. Here’s to a challenging year ahead.

References

Freud, A. (1937). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. (The International Psychoanalytical Library, No. 30.).

Peck, M. S. (1978). The road less travelled: a new psychology of love, traditional values and spiritual growth. Arrow.