LANGUISHING OR JUST LAZY

(SOME THOUGHTS ON WRITER’S BLOCK)

I have a file filled with papers my parents saved over the years, mostly of my academic “achievements”, report cards, newspaper clippings and the like.  Among those papers is a fifth grade report card which contains the following handwritten comment: “Pamela is an excellent student who needs to put forth more effort.  She is inclined to be lazy.”  So there it is.  The label that attached itself to me at 10 years old and has been there ever since.  Sometimes it’s been the source of my self-deprecation; but more often than not it’s become a convenient excuse for when I fall into what I may call a funk, a slump, or more seriously a “dark night of the soul”.

Of course, I’m not implying that Mrs. MacNaughton is the source of self-doubt into my sixth decade of life.  A life which has been, for the most part, marked with a large amount of productivity and even success.  But the label of “lazy” often nags at me like the tag in the neck of a shirt when I try to determine the reason for my inability to write in the last 6 months or so.  And not only writing, but pretty much the lack of doing anything that one might consider productive.

As I spent time contemplating this recently (which really means I was overthinking, overanalyzing, and obsessing about it) I read a devotional by Lysa Terkeurst about “languishing”. (Seeing Beautiful Again, p. 133).  The subject matter which she wrote about was about being in a time of uncertainty during a difficult period in her life.  But the word itself caught my attention, as did the bible verse she cited: Psalm 6:2-3-

“Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.  My soul also is greatly troubled.  But you, O Lord – how long?” (ESV)

This started me down an etymological rabbit hole on the word itself.  And I was surprised to find that not only is it a word that so aptly describes my current state of laziness, it has become recognized as a condition in the mental health field, falling somewhere between depression and flourishing.  Corey Keyes, a sociologist from Emery University, defined languishing as “not depression or sadness, but rather the ‘absence of feeling good about your life’” (from an interview on WBUR on May 4, 2021, and posted by Robin Young and Serena McMahon- “Living, but not flourishing: The Pandemic-Fueled feeling known as ‘Languishing’”)

Languishing is also the lack of meaning, purpose or belonging in life, which leads to emptiness, lack of emotion and stagnation (Adam Grant, New York Times April 21, 2021).  The dictionary definition is “to become feeble, weak or enervated; to be or live in a state of depression or decreasing vitality; to become dispirited”. 

There’s a word from the French which has a similar meaning – ennui.  It’s a more poetic word for “boredom”; but not just ordinary boredom.  More the type of boredom which results from living a life of ease. Poet Charles Lloyd described ennui as “a soul-destroying fiend” which visits with its “pale unrest the chambers of the human breast where too much happiness has fixed its home” (Stanzas to Ennui, 1823).  While I would hardly describe life (mine or that of others) in the past year as a life of ease or too much happiness, my current mood can certainly be described as dispirited, listless, soul-destroying.

So what does any of this have to do with my alleged “writer’s block”.  Maybe nothing.  I often use the rationale that my writing is not that interesting to others anyway, so why bother; or that it’s just a self-serving form of catharsis, sometimes called “word vomit”, a way to just purge my feelings and move on.  Maybe the idea of languishing is just a fancier word for laziness, a trendy excuse that I can fall back on times when I feel completely unmotivated to write and share my feelings, even though they are abundant and swirling in tornado-like fashion in my mind. 

I do know that I felt a tiny bit of justification when I read that, according to Keyes, about 12% of the population currently suffers from languishing, yet another phenomenon resulting from a year-long pandemic.  I can add a long list of events in my personal life which can further justify my feelings of being overwhelmed and thus immobilized -moving, knee surgery, selling and buying a house, not working.  Things which aren’t necessarily “bad” or negative, but certainly emotional.

Whatever the reason for the current funk I find myself in, I do know I don’t want to stay here.  I chose a word at the start of the year to be my focus, an idea suggested by an on-line community I follow.  The idea was to find a verse or comment at least weekly which spoke to that word and use it as encouragement.  My word for this year was “hope”.  I have, as with all the other disciplines in my life, failed miserably making it a weekly exercise to pray and meditate and write on that word.  Truthfully, it’s been months since I’ve even pretended to do that.  But in the last week or so I’ve had glimpses of what it might look like.  Silly as it may seem, finding a word which so perfectly describes my mood has given me hope.  Being part of an on-line community of women I don’t even know but who are similarly struggling has motivated me a bit. (Thanks Suzie Eller for telling me “write that blog post sister!”)  Being able to visit with family has helped the feeling of isolation I have had, although I still sometimes feel like a “stranger in a strange land”. 

Meditation has long been a practice I have used to start my day, to try and begin my day in a positive frame of mind.  My struggles in the past 6 months have resulted partly from the former “routine” of my days being disrupted and distorted to the point where there is no longer a recognizable routine.  Instead of the anticipation of the day’s tasks being the source of anxiety, the quiet of nighttime and the anticipation of insomnia have taken its place.  Recently I have tried to end my day by turning off the television and finding something to meditate on before going to bed in an attempt to ward off those sleep-robbing thoughts.  There are nights that it works, that I am able to repeat a verse or a phrase until I fall asleep.  And that gives me hope.

The psalm that I cited at the beginning of this goes on to say “I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping.” Ps 6:6.  I am grateful that I have not reached that depth of despair.  I don’t know if I am to the point of saying and believing “The Lord has heard my plea; the Lord accepts my prayer” (Ps. 6:9).  But I am starting to hope, to have some focus in the midst of the fog, hope that I am moving from languishing to flourishing.  Perhaps flourishing is too optimistic; but I’m no longer choosing to have laziness as a label that keeps me hopeless.  And I am moving toward believing, once again, that “You who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again; from the depths of the earth you will bring me up again.  You will increase my greatness and comfort me again” (Ps. 71:20-21)