Welcome to the future – Part III

We are on a cruise ship in Norway. It’s packed with tiny Americans dressed up with way to perfect teeth, huge jewelleries and very high hair. Here’s nothing to do. Absolutely nothing! Luckily we belong to the select few who don’t mind eight hours of tranquility in a deckchair with warm blankets and the beautiful view of the Norwegian mountains. As time goes by people get more and more restless. The overwhelming amount of inactivity seems to be too much to handle. It strikes us how often we see the same people pass by. After all, this ship has 8 levels! They’re all out there hunting for that non-existent activity. And the internet! There’s a very fine line between dream and nightmare. The dream of a peaceful and pleasurable holiday cruise with nothing to do! And the nightmare when your cruise turn into a living hell with the same scene played over again and again. In Norway, and with nowhere to run!

To do has become to be. Hence, the more we do the more we’re at ease with ourselves. Quite interesting! A holiday dream is to do “nothing”, and as soon as our holiday come close a stress related rash appears imposed by all those things we ought to do.

A dear friend recently confessed that on her gravestone she’d like to have “At last!” written. Her daily life had become such a marathon of work and responsibilities that her only comfort was the day when she’d be one of the old ones too, sitting on a porch, cosily wrapped up in a big blanket, a cigarillo sticking out of her mouth, thinking only about her cross word. All she is certain of then is that once she’s in the grave no one’s able to disturb her no more!

Never has it been easier to realise “the good life” and we have never been more stressed, lonely and hurried. We’ve got all the things we ever dreamt of, all the products we need for our daily lives, and a lot more spare time than people used to have. But then we’re still pushing life ahead of us. We say, “It’ll pass” or “it’s just temporarily”. “Give me just another minute, then I’ll be satisfied, I just need to prepare the dinner, and get the kids to bed, and make their lunch for tomorrow, and call my dentist, and, oh that’s right, buy a trampoline for the kids, or maybe a some chickens, or why not just get an MBA while I’m at it?”
This is what we call “lost in transition”. Look out for chaotic days, lots of stress, a lot of wupsi-conclusions, a lot of unfinished business, mainly because you still believe it will pass. “It’s alright to live with Bob, and his hairy back, for a few more years because eventually my prince will save me on a white horse”. “It wont be long before I start exercising. As soon as the weather gets warmer I’ll start. And then I’ll quit the cigarettes too. And as soon as I’ve lost my first stone everything will be so much easier…”

Our lives are filled with temporary arrangements that we don’t really take serious. We don’t mind to do our shopping in a petrol station, eat a bit of fast food, and then explain ourselves that today doesn’t matter because today was much harder than what we normally experience and that’s why we really deserve this. Next week though!
And then the weekends, when we’re supposed to have a real dinner all together. Just the idea of a real dinner makes the expectation go ballistic – and fatal. But next week that will all work out much better. We long for our dreams to come true. And in the dream, we all eat homemade organic bread, cheese bought from the local producers and French wines imported only from a rare chateaux. Then why is it that statistics shows our petrol stations and discount shops are experiencing and enormous growth in the retail market anyway? Although not an obvious dream, they do fit into our lives – especially when two bottles of milk are on sale and food is pre-made and only needs 20 minutes in an oven while we set the table. While health and fitness is all that ever concerns us nowadays we’ve never bought more frozen cakes in the history of mankind.

I – Anne – personally live with what I call my transitional china. It’s a lot of cheap plates, cups, and crap and not very pretty things bought at the supermarket, at discount warehouses, stolen from my parents and similar places. I’m waiting for the right china to show up. I don’t really know what it looks like but I know, I will know, as soon as I see it! It will be the prince Charming of my kitchen. The only problem is that so far 16 years have passed and I still haven’t found it. By now I get coffee cups from my father-in-law at Christmas because he’s so fed up with my old chipped mugs.
Our life is a mix of dream and reality. Between what we strive for and how things are in reality. Opposite, our grand parents lives were based on stability and routines. The transition from childhood to adulthood marked two long periods in a lifetime split by the Confirmation as the transitional ritual. The periods with stability were long and the uncertainties in life softened by routines and rituals. Today it’s visa versa. We’ve given up on the old rituals. Chaos and instability are the new routines and we’ll deal with them until life changes – right after the children are in bed of course! After the project’ deadline. When we retire. We pass time thinking about all the better things out there we ought to do although we’re not quite certain what they are. We don’t even realise how hopeless it sounds when we’re excusing how little time we spend with the family, our friends or ourselves for God knows what time. And suddenly 20 years have passed!

There’re plenty of 35 year olds out there who still believe they are teenagers and plenty of +55 year olds who don’t really believe in that they’ll ever get really old. And then there’re all those people who are looking forward to the retirement. When life will be really sweet. And the golf handicap will fall significantly. And when the grandchildren will get to know their grandparents as they really are – relaxed, with plenty of time and experiences to share. And while we’re at it we might just write our autobiography too. The retirement will pass like the beautiful mountains around a cruise ship in Norway.

But the time, which has passed, is the life that we’ve been given. A life filled with mess, worn out underwear, and suicidal flowers. Where deadlines this week are met by deadlines next week and a day hasn’t got an extra 25th hour to help us spend more time with the people who really need us. In fact, if we can’t live life today, why do we believe it will change tomorrow?

It’s important to enjoy the everyday things because they are what our lives consist of. And don’t wait until the day we’re 9 feet below. There’s no point in waiting for a dream to come true if in fact we’ll realise this dream is as unbearable as a Norwegian cruise ship from hell. If we can’t sit down and enjoy daily life as it is – the peace, the family, the friends, a cold beer, the view or even ourselves – then we can’t do it on a holiday neither. So, is life what passes by while we’re busy planning our next dream? Not really, eh!

Things to do when you are lost in transition:

• Have a big laugh at yourself. We are all humans and living the dream all the time is boring.

• Sit down and take a mental picture – it might not be much better in the future, so learn to appreciate what you have.

• Listen. Open your mind to the things you don’t know and don’t understand. Frustration and provocation is part of being human.

• Create rituals. Rituals ease the pain of being in transition. Rituals are short-term actions that create ”a magical effect”. The meeting is a ritual (but very often not a very energising one). Create events that bring good energy to your life and those around you. You will be amazed how many odd things you can do when they are framed as rituals, and you explain your behaviour by saying “this is the way I have always been doing it”.

•Stop thinking so much and start doing. If you feel stuck, change perspective – do something you would not normally do. Sleep on the other side of the bed. Take a day without tv, radio, phone, pc etc. Dress like you would if no one was looking.

• Call an old friend and have a cup of coffee.

• Write your favourite schoolteacher and tell her or him how much he/she mattered in your life.

• Make peace with one who deserves it.

• If you have some – let the kids decide what to do and let them entertain you for a whole day.

• If you don’t have kids sleep in and go to the movies.

• The easiest way to reach a success is to lower your expectations. List 5 things that will make this summer fantastic and decide what three you want to focus on in order for it to be a success.

• And when you come back from vacation delete all boring and unimportant mails in your inbox and throw ditto paper in the trash. That which is important will always come again.

By Anne Skare Nielsen
& Liselotte Lyngsø