Category: Alain de Botton

Pain and discipline for my happiness

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I am happy these days. Things are going well. I moved to the new house. It’s gorgeous. I am playing water-polo, I am doing spinning at the gym, I am studying for my private pilot exams and I am getting ready to my first solo flight. Work is going well too. So, all in all, great times.

When I was spinning this morning, I was thinking about the pain that I feel while doing the physical effort, and how much this gives me motivation. My body feels great after a workout. Same thing with water-polo: there is not only the physical pain of suffering during the training, but also the coaching time; the authority of the coach, the discipline; the orders, in a way, comfort me. They make me feel kind of safe. It’s not easy to explain, but I find that an environment of school, like learning waterpolo, learning to fly in a classroom, it all brings me back to the comfort time I had back when I was little, when life was good and free of worries. And now that I think, sports was a big part of my youth. The pain and the discipline of those days, be it at school, at sports or at home (with my dad being quite authoritarian) make me feel good. These are elements I am familiar with, and I associate good times related to those years of my life.

Yes, studying was tough, doing competitive sport was hard, receiving instructions from the coach was tough sometimes, but it was what I was used to. And it makes me feel good today. I realise today that I have picked activities that give me a similar amount of pain and discipline as when I was 14, 18 or 20. This makes me think of what Alain de Botton said about love and marriage. In the article “why you will marry the wrong person” he says that “what we really seek is familiarity — which may well complicate any plans we might have had for happiness. We are looking to recreate, within our adult relationships, the feelings we knew so well in childhood”. You can check out the article here. In my case, I was looking for pain and discipline in very specific environments. By reproducing these, I have been able to re-create a space that feels familiar, in a good way. I am filling the baskets with lots of eggs that give me plenty of goodness.

So great to think back to only 2 years ago, when I was still depressed and on medication, and looking at today, with a good life and a stronger self. Pain and Discipline: be welcome. Love: I welcome you too, whenever you decide to knock at my door (’cause I ain’t doing Tinder!).

With hope.

Laura

Familiarity

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It’s been way too long since my last post. A lot has happened. First I went on holiday. It was really good. I have thrown away cell phone, laptop, and all I did was eat, sleep and swim in the sea. Second I finished my antidepressant. Yeah! 4 September 2020 is the first day off Fluoxetin. In June I had gotten prescribed half dosage for 3 months, meaning 10mg instead of 20mg, and then basta, give it up and see how it goes. My spirits are high, I am rejuvenated from the holidays and I like my job. It’s a good start to test my time off medicaments.

What I would really like to highlight here, is that I think familiarity was really key to this whole process. Alain de Botton says this about love. Have you heard any of his conferences? You can check Ted Talk. Great guy, a philosopher with lots of knowledge and a great look at modernity through the eyes of the Greek philosophers. He basically says that when we fall in love it is usually with people that don’t make us feel necessarily good, but familiar, as we unconsciously seek for the feelings we are familiar with. “We chase after more exciting others, not in the belief that life with them will be more harmonious, but out of an unconscious sense that it will be reassuringly familiar in its patterns of frustration.” (quote from one of his books, see it here). Sounds like a side track to my story, but it all makes sense to me! I had a great time at the beach in Italy, 2 weeks of bliss, without doing anything special, but I was at the campground where I have spent most of my summers since my first year of age. And that’s the recipe: I needed familiarity, I needed to go back to what I know and am accustomed to, the love of my parents, a routine, etc. Four years ago, when my life changed for what I thought was the worst, this is what I was seeking all along, without exactly knowing. When I left W., the love of my life, I was going in this direction, but I couldn’t see it then. I went through hell, to get where I am now; I had to leave him in order to find me. I had lost me on the way, I wasn’t feeling the earth under my feet. I had to go back to what was familiar; stay in one place, refind balance, finding a routine… all things I have despised for the last 20 years.

And here I am now, four years after moving back to Switzerland, leaving W., changing jobs, coming closer to my hometown (1’000 km instead of 9’000 km), having a stable job, paying retirement insurance, saving money to buy a house, visiting friends a few km from my place in Geneva, etc. I didn’t have to give up W., but that’s what it took in my case; I miss him dearly every damn day of the year, since 4 years; he doesn’t want to talk to me, 14 years together, and I threw that away; and he didn’t pick it up for us. He let us go as much as I did. But that’s another story. For another post.

I am happy and serene. Gained 4 kilo, but am sort of pleased by the extra “ciccia” :-). I want to get back in shape, it will come. For now I look at my belly and I smile. Abundance is welcome, also in the flesh. Anything, but not depression. Ok, no cancer either, thank you.