There've been lots of really great things about this month (the customary video for which is here). 

There was the Mid-Autumn Festival. And there were our days out to Simunjan, Sematan and environs, and Santubong.



Then there was the crocodile... It's not that I'm a huge fan of crocodiles, but you have to admit that a croc-in-the-city is a little different.

It's been a reasonable posting month. If you add in two shadow-journey posts, on Turkey and the Caucasus, you get the highest monthly number of PT posts this year. Plus, we've had a VC post wrapping up some more travel thoughts, and a VT post on crocs in Yamoussoukro (wonder why...).

Despite all this, I've really struggled to remain buoyant this month.


Last year, before the covid horror began, almost half a million Malaysians were experiencing depression. The pandemic is unlikely to have helped. The number of attempted suicides here between January and June is a whopping 465, and one voluntary organization reports an increased number of contacts from July to September, even though some aspects of the situation had at that point eased. 

Malaysia is far from being the only place affected in this way. The Economist documents a troubling increase in suicides in a range of disparate populations.  There is apparently a "long history of links between epidemics and suicides".

We're all feeling it, aren't we? Because this wretched thing is going on and on and on, and there's just no end in sight.

Globally, the figures are stark. Europe is disastrous; the US is disastrous; Latin America is disastrous.

And Malaysia, though in the halfpenny places compared with these covid catastrophes, now has over 10,000 active cases, and as of yesterday had registered 246 deaths. The schools in Kuching are closed again, as are bars state-wide. Movement between regions in Sarawak is still allowed, but is discouraged.

It's all so very tiring. The unpredictability. The fear. The constant need for vigilance. The worry about those you love. The doom-laden feeling that the menace is creeping closer again, never ready to give in.  The claustrophobic feeling that you're trapped on a narrow ledge, way up high, and you can't go forward or back.





And things that were once pleasures are no longer so enjoyable. Eating out is still a source of contentment, but there's no lingering any more. And, as I explained a couple of weeks ago, masks, crowds, slippery pavements, and dogs often make walking more of a chore than a joy. We've already downgraded our target to 10,000 paces a day, which is probably sensible, but also feels like a retrograde move.

The whole shit-bundle takes its toll. I swear I have disproportionately more grey hairs now. For sure we're more tired than we usually are, and I'm suffering way more migraines than is normal for me.


I fully acknowledge that I have so very, very much to be thankful for, compared with what so many are going through. Even though we have been cut off from our families, we have been incredibly lucky. And I register that, very gratefully.

But as I said, coping with this continuing nightmare is exhausting a la longue. And though it's true that I am extraordinarily fortunate, that doesn't mean that I don't have my own sense of grief and bereavement to deal with. All the travel plans and hopes and dreams we had for retirement -- what is going to become of any of them? Yes, I feel spoilt and ludicrously privileged for just saying that, when so many others are suffering so much more. But they were my dreams. I'm entitled to mourn their passing (or at least their perilous position on life support).


Psychology prof Nick Haslam encourages us not to be too self-critical: "Remember to cut yourself some slack. For most people, the pandemic has been a unique challenge. When judging how well we've coped we should practise self-compassion. Let's not make things worse by criticising ourselves for failing to cope better."

So, yeah, I've not been anywhere near as wise and serene and trusting as I would have wanted to be in facing this global predicament. But I have done my best. Really.

The thing is that my best doesn't seem to be enough any more to lift me above the storm.


I often refer to Maria Popova's extraordinarily thoughtful work, and I quoted her "life-learnings" in a Velvet Cushion post last November.

She recently added her most recent annual "learning", her 14th. She too has found the past year "the most trying I have lived through, by orders of magnitude", and has faced depression and "black fog". All the more extraordinary, then, that her latest "learning" was born of this realization: "No matter the outer atmosphere of circumstance, one must lift the inner cloudscape by one's own efforts, or perish under it."

So Learning No. 14 encourages us to "choose joy". I won't paraphrase, as every word feels as though it has been carefully chosen:

"Choose joy... Choose it at first consciously, effortfully, pressing against the weight of a world heavy with reasons for sorrow, restless with need for action. Feel the sorrow, take the action, but keep pressing the weight of joy against it all, until it becomes mindless, automated, like gravity pulling the stream down its course; until it becomes an inner law of nature. If [Auschwitz-survivor] Viktor Frankl can exclaim 'yes to life, in spite of everything' -- and what an everything he lived through -- then so can any one of us amid the rubble of our plans, so trifling by comparison. Joy is not a function of a life free of friction and frustration, but a function of focus -- an inner elevation by the fulcrum of choice. So often, it is a matter of attending to what Hermann Hesse called ... 'the little joys'; so often, those are the slender threads of which we weave the lifeline that saves us."

I couldn't agree more. But it's really hard to do.


This morning I set out with this thought in mind. The beginning of the walk gave me a rainbow. The end gave me pursuing dogs...

I don't know what you do to change things.