Day #11 of COVID

This is unprecedented for all of us – even when you think about SARS. My wife and I went to the Air Canada Center for a simultaneous concert with folks at the Sky Dome. Sarah McLaughlin and Diana Krall at one, Bare Naked Ladies and The Hip at the other – but the whole thing seems ludicrous now. Imagine amid COVID-19 bringing large groups of people together for a concert to raise money to support the front line workers?!! Instead, we are in social isolation to stop the spread. And it does not take long before boredom sets in.

In my family our only way out of the house is to take the dog for a walk. Which is awesome. The local golf course is open to the public over winter and we get a chance (at good social distance from all but other dogs) to engage in what the Japanese call ‘shinrin-yoku’ – forest air bathing. OK, it’s not quite a forest, but there are plots of trees and the sound of cars are pretty distant. It’s not just good for the soul, it holds boredom at bay.[i] But it is only an hour or so out of the day. What do we do with the rest of the time?

The key issue for me is constraint. Not being able to freely choose what to do next. If you think of something you want to do but can’t, first you get annoyed, frustrated, but eventually you get ansty, restless. Bored. It happened to me just the other night, I can’t say why, but I found myself at 5:00 pm having achieved as much ‘work from home’ as I thought I could but not feeling like I was done. I desperately wanted to be doing something but here I was stuck in my home with no clue what I should do. And for whatever reason (I always find it remarkable to think about the randomness of thoughts that pop into our heads) I decided I would bake a cake. Immediately, I called my mum in Australia, asked for two recipes I remember loving in childhood and I was off to the races as they say. The cake didn’t matter. The fact that it was a bit of a failure (I would have lost Chopped Canada had I been on it) didn’t matter. The fact that I was the only member of my family who would eat it (it was a coffee cake which neither my wife nor kids would like) didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I chose to do it and did it. Isolation, for whatever reason[ii], robs us of our sense of control over what we do. Any small acts of rebellion can help keep the boredom at bay.

But you can’t always choose to just bake a cake. And you can’t just do whatever you want – we’re in lock down right. And here, I think of something kinda counterintuitive. Christopher Burney, a British agent in WWII was captured in France early on and spent more than 500 days in solitary confinement in Germany.[iii] He claimed that variety is not just the spice of life but that it is life itself. But he also extolled the virtues of routine. Meager food rations were given at the start of a day and Burney would save some of it to have later in the day. But his discipline was not robotic. Sometimes he couldn’t help but eat it all as soon as it came. And when he did succumb (understandably) he was devastated. Depressed and disappointed. So while variety is critical, surviving constraints requires some extraordinary discipline to stick to meaningful routines.

So what do we need while in isolation from COVID? Small acts of rebellion – bake whatever metaphorical cakes you need to, just to feel like you’re in control – that you’re still the author of your own life. And routine. Not routine imposed from without, but routine chosen on your own terms. Give some structure to the weirdness so that you feel you’ve made choices rather than having them imposed upon you. Not sure I’ll succeed myself – I don’t imagine I could survive what Burney did (and let’s hope I don’t have to find out). But maybe after a few more failed cakes I’ll figure out a better way of coping with the boredom borne of isolation.

[i] Morita, E., Fukuda, S., Nagano, J., Hamajima, N., Yamamoto, H., Iwai, Y., ... & Shirakawa, T. J. P. H. (2007). Psychological effects of forest environments on healthy adults: Shinrin-yoku (forest-air bathing, walking) as a possible method of stress reduction. Public health, 121, 54-63.

[ii] Isolation can come in a range of different places – some more unexpected than others. In what are known as Isolated and Confined Environment (ICE) studies researchers look at the psychological toll of polar and space expiditions – boredom is a common theme. Palinkas, L. (2003). The psychology of isolated and confined environments: understanding human behavior in Antarctica. American Psychologist, 58, 353–363.  Palinkas, L., Gunderson, E.K., Holland, A.W., Miller, C., & Johnsen, J.C. (2000). Predictors of behavior and performance in extreme environments: the Antarctic space analogue program. Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine, 71, 619–625. And in incarceration (particularly solitary confinement) boredom is clearly tortuous. Arrigo, B.A., & Bullock, J.L. (2008). The psychological effects of solitary confinement on prisoners in supermax units: Reviewing what we know and recommending what should change. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 52, 622–640.

[iii] Burney, C. (1946). Solitary Confinement: The dungeon democracy. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce.