Oppression or Opportunity

This weeks theme is choice. With much of our ‘freedom’ taken away from us at the moment, choice becomes a fascinating topic to consider.

Held hostage, as we are, in our own homes, forces us to confront issues of freedom and independence.

With so many liberties removed from our day-to-day lives, what choices are still available to us and do the choices we make now feel the same as before?

The micro-decisions and the big ones are all different now. Most of what we do from the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep has been effected. From deciding what to wear in the morning, now that we can’t to work, to what we will eat for dinner, now that we can’t pop to the shops. How can I make the loo roll last a few days longer? Should I ask if my neighbour needs anything when I do the weekly shop? Should I keep my mouth shut to avoid the consequences of speaking up with no escape route.

These choices, which in the noise of our lives before COVID_19 were somehow smaller, have now become the central focus of the day.

This week we’re going to look at choice from a number of perspectives. Some of us are in a position where we still have choice over how we spend our time in isolation, who we spend it with and how much control we have over the environment we’re in.

Some of us have had most of our choices removed and are being dictated to by dominant factors in our lives. Like work and the restrictions that WFH can enforce. Or perhaps we’re confined with someone who has taken control of us to a minute degree.

When I made documentaries for a living, I got to work with some incredible people. I heard inspiring stories and learned life lessons from some of the most influential people on the planet. It’s at times like these, when ordinary people come up against a challenge or extraordinary circumstance, that the listening and learning I did during my days as a producer come in real handy.

John McCarthy, who was captured in 1986 and held hostage in Beruit until his release in 1991, told me much about his time in captivity. One of the things he spoke about, which can help all of us in these unprecedented times, is the power of thought. He didn’t have any control what-so-ever of the environment he was in, nor how his captors treated him. He couldn’t choose what he ate, when he was allowed/not allowed to move. When he slept, when he woke…

But what he could do was control how he thought about what he was experiencing.

He couldn’t stop the abuse or neglect, but he could find ways to make it useful.

How can you use abuse or hurt, injury or trauma to your advantage?

Well, we can look for the learning. We can look for the lessons and the development that the experience can have on who we are now and how we will become stronger, more compassionate, more accepting, more flexible, more robust as a result of this experience.

Things that hurt, things that brake us, things that crack us open literally or metaphorically, can bring an opportunity for growth and healing, if we choose to see them that way.

One of the most valuable lessons I’ve ever learned is to see things from a growth perspective. What I mean by this is that whatever happens in life, I have learned to see as happening FOR me not TO me.

This perspective has given me the ability to face each moment with the outlook that whatever is happening it is going to teach me something. Whatever is happening, no matter how upsetting, challenging or heartbreaking is going to enable me to feel something important, is going to help me to increase my resilience, is going to help mould me into someone who can be even more emotionally balanced.

Whatever happens can be enveloped in an opportunity to expand my capacity to endure and overcome adversity. Over the past 5 or 6 years, with this mindset I have been able to overcome loss and grief, the likes of which in earlier years, I genuinely believed would have killed me.

I have recovered from traumatic injury, when I fell from my horse. Literally learning to breath again after one of my lungs collapsed and my diaphragm went into shock restricting my lung capacity by over 50%. I’ve learned to coordinate my eye movements with turning my head correctly, as this ability was initially taken away with the fall. I had to relearn to trust my body to react helpfully when I perceive danger, rather than freeze; another side effect of the trauma. I’m still recovering from whiplash 4 years later … but the journey is one that I embrace because I am more connected to my body and my mind and the intrinsic link between physical and psychological trauma. I understand about cellular memory, PTSD, the importance of resting my body when previously I had a ‘no pain no gain’ mentality that caused me endless negative repercussions…

There are countless examples I could give for the benefits that the idea: ‘Life happens FOR us not TO us’, has had for me. But for now I want to pose it as a choice you can make. A choice you could make to shift your mindset into one of growth and opportunity rather than restriction and lack.

How could you use this idea in your life at the moment? How could our current circumstance be happening FOR you instead of TO you?

What are you learning, about yourself? About others? About humanity?

What has become important, now that so much of the stuff our lives are usually filled with as been taken away?

What are you yearning for that usually you could choose to do, experience or be a part of?

What are you relieved that you no longer have to do, experience or be a part of?

What can you choose to do each day that brings you a feeling of hope, joy, contentment?

What are you currently choosing to do that you know isn’t helpful for your wellbeing? What could you choose to do instead?

If there was one small choice you could make each day from now on, that you know would help you to feel better, what would it be?

The circumstances we find ourselves in could be a turning point in our lives. On a personal minute scale. It could change the way we see ourselves, other people and the planet. It could be an opportunity for us to make choices and changes that will have a monumental impact across our entire lives, just like the mindset shift I consciously and resolutely made in 2015.

If we choose to see it as such this could be a tipping point for the health of the planet. It could be a seismic shift in humanity.

Or it could be something that we look back on and remember as an inconvenient moment in our lives, where we had to stay indoors for a bit.

How do you want to use this time? How do you choose to see what is happening? How in a few years time do you want to talk about your experience of the lockdown?

Think about that... Then make your choice.