If One Day is too Much

Motivation is a thing with feathers. Similarly fleeting, what we call "mental health" can be found on uneven grounds. For many, looking back on their life is seeing a patchwork of very different emotional and physical states, and such is life.

I can say I have been through some pretty dark patches. A year coloured by panic attacks, depression, spiralling, and an array of drugs. Other times, long periods of crying and overeating...or eating too little.

While not experienced by everyone, for some folk, the very purpose of wellbeing becomes shaky and dubious. Why get better at all?

Why, indeed, anything?

A good advice is to take it one day at a time.

In reality, we mentally live far in the future way too often, if not dwelling in the past.

When life in general seems like too much, when thoughts about work become overwhelming, when we place ourselves so far into the future we forget where we are: take one day at the time.

Generally, this is a way of reminding ourselves to be mindful, and live in the present, as well as enjoying what's right in front of us. As someone who sees the cup half empty sometimes--but wants to fill it-- I like to think that it is also a way of resizing our troubles. In other words, what seems impossible to cope with for life, may be made to seem like an achievable feat if it only will last this finite day.

But for some people, one day at a time is too big a block of time to be helpful. In extreme suffering, twentyfour hours may seem an eternity.

It doesn't seem proposterous then to imagine the present moment as outside of the confine of the day. Perhaps, it would be more managable to deal with the next hour. During a panic attack, for example, may be useful to eliminate a sense of time (lasting) completely or, to take it a minute at a time, or however small this frame needs to be.

Days can go faster than a daydream, but they can feel exemptionally slow. Even tiredome, lonesome, or oppressive.

Interestingly, the two things can be true at the same time. Remember Covid-19? It seems like only yesterday, and at the same time like a distant memory. Close inside our houses (I was in Melbourne, longest lockdown in the world) time went both fast, with days bleeding into each other, and terribly slow.

Redefining what is doable must not come at the cost of shame and stigma. In How To Do Laundry When You're Depressed, KC Davis brilliantly demonstrates the power of realising and embracing our limits, and working on not feeling shame about it. Cooking, cleaning, or even brushing your teeth don't make you a good person. They may be necessary, but we can decide how. Daily actions such as chores, for example, don't carry jusgment on our nature as a worthy human being. It's ok to take shortcuts.

Similarly, it's ok to admit that it may feel to hard to cope with the idea of getting from morning to night, and that getting "from here to there" may mean surviving the next few minutes.

You're not lazy or bad if you need to focus on one hour of work at a time; you're not a useless human being if you need to focus on one minute at a time while you cry and try to take deep breaths. If you function differently than most people, it doesn't make you less of a person. Never.

Sometimes, I just think of keeping it together until lunch, and then, to dinner.