Tag: mental-health

The Dishwasher’s Anxiety: The Return of the Lesser Tasks

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

Doing the dishes brings me (back) to the desert of the real and gives me anxiety. When I’m disconnected from the virtual world, and there are no distractions (like music or TV), and there’s no one else (like my wife) with me in the kitchen, certain thoughts, like dead fish (forgotten to be fed), rise to the surface to float among the oceanic debris of my mind. My thoughts go to where the trash is, to the center of an unremembered psychological gyre, where mental litter has been accumulating for a long time. And as I rinse the first batch of plates and arrange them on the dish rack, anxiety builds. My heart simmers in a saucepan on the gas stove.

Cutting the Umbilical Wire

Unplugging myself from the virtual world has become a little like cutting my own umbilical cord (again and again), separating myself from the pseudo-singularity that intends to keep me in its womb. But this separation never lasts long. Either the umbilical cord — wire — (like a slithering cable, a hissing electrical wire) will come after me to reconnect me to the virtual world, or, after agonizing withdrawal symptoms, I will seek the teat of the (omnipresent, omniscient) machine and start sucking on it.

The artificial universe keeps me busy. It keeps me entertained. It keeps me away from myself, whom it would be hell to spend time with.

[We’ve become like whales. The artificial universe is our sea. We still come up for air, but we are sea animals now.] [We are like foie gras ducks. We allow the ramming of virtual pipes down our eye sockets and ears to enable the pumping of massive amounts of content into our brains.]

But it’s important to note here that disconnecting from the internet is not enough to exit the hyperreal, to reenter raw reality. If the TV is on, or if there’s music playing in the background, I am still in the hyperreal. I must exclude everything from the setting that can interfere with my mind’s idleness — or, to put it differently, for this to work, to experience the anxiety of a man washing the dishes, my mind must be “unassigned,” idle. Only then can the mind drift and, often without the slightest intention, find itself at the center of the psychological gyre, the Atlantis that can only be found when we are lost in the sea of Kierkegaard’s doppelganger’s infinite resignation. Land ahoy! Here it is, then, finally, the island made of everything we’ve thrown (tried to throw) away.

Here, I expect that some of you will say, “But we know you. You spend much less time staring at screens than many of us.” You are right, and this changes nothing. I still (unconsciously and sometimes consciously) keep myself from rediscovering Atlantis. I do this by getting wasted, by constantly intoxicating myself with booze, books, and other boredom-repelling activities. No one wants to stay in the desert of the real, which is exile, or a penal colony of sorts that is paradoxically (the nauseating) freedom (we all cower from). So, like almost everyone in this technologically advanced, becoming world, I am almost always in the hyperreal. It is only when I do things like washing the dishes (without distractions) that I enter the process of exiting the hyperreal: this process is the anxiety I’m talking about.

The Dishwasher’s Anxiety

This anxiety (of a man doing the dishes without distraction) is too intense for me — it’s unbearable. (Is this why dirty dishes pile up in the sink when it’s my turn to do them?) One can only wash so many mugs, spoons, forks, knives, pots, and plates without coming face to face with the [unnamable] that human progress strove to leave behind.

In addition to the above, the anxiety I’m talking about seems to be powered by postponement. It isn’t procrastination because the mind is never idle, and we are always “working.” There’s always something “more important” (which is, in fact, less important) to do, and that’s what we’re continuously preoccupied with. The mind never finds time for defragmentation. (Sleep is not enough since it happens automatically in the subconscious. Conscious, deliberate defragmentation is also needed.) Unfortunately, we constantly postpone things we ought to deal with. We let these things die (like fish) and, as they (remain uneaten and) slowly decompose, join the accumulated trash at the center of our polluted psychological gyres.

“I do not have time for this,” our busy mindset keeps repeating. “I will deal with this later,” we keep saying. We focus on the “important” or more “urgent” things while we postpone going to the dentist or the doctor, postpone spending quality time with the wife, postpone the confrontation with the person who’s been bothering us, postpone the planned dinner with the parents, postpone the call with the mother, postpone the happy hour with friends, postpone calling the plumber or the electrician, postpone dealing with this little issue and that little issue, et cetera, ad infinitum. And when the more “important” and more “urgent” tasks are completed, we find ourselves too exhausted to take care of what we postponed.

In other words, we postpone certain things to prioritize certain other things, and later, the time comes for us to deal with the corpse (or the ghost) of what we postponed more than we should have, which gives us the dishwasher’s anxiety when we, well, do the dishes.

But that’s not all. There are more things to consider. There’s also [The repression of the awareness of death: we do not think about our death; we only acknowledge our eventual death in passing. After all, who has time to look at the hourglass, to count the slipping sands of time? Who is willing to waste their finite time to contemplate mortality?] And also [The repression of the absurd: we do not think about the meaninglessness; we merely acknowledge it in passing as if it’s an acquaintance we’ve never had (or will never have) a conversation with.]

The Fear of Missing Out

While I’d like to exit the hyperreal, I do not want to live exclusively in the desert of the real, where the anxiety is. Of course, in the universe of raw reality, the anxiety ultimately dies away if you stay there long enough. However, in this universe of raw reality, there will come a time when you’ll have to dump your humanness and return to being an animal or worse, a god. And that is not the path I want to take, for I wish to remain human.

And, no, I don’t think that if I stay where the anxiety is and keep searching, I will find Easter eggs that so many gamers love to find. I know I won’t unlock new levels. And I won’t uncover the “hidden” truth, will I? Will I uncover the “hidden” truth? Or is it because I already know the yet-uncovered “hidden” truth that I don’t want to dwell there too long? Or is it the “fear of missing out” that brings me back to the artificial universe? After all, whatever is interesting — or is talked about — is already uploaded or simulated in it.

The fear of missing out (FOMO) is a trending disorder, for sure. And one of the components of this anxiety that visits me when I’m washing the dishes is FOMO. But FOMO isn’t just the fear of missing out. I would like to redefine it, adjust its definition a little. FOMO is also the fear of having missed out on something. It is also the fear of not knowing that you’ve missed something. And because everything I don’t want to miss out on is in the virtual world (or is communicated to me via the virtual world), we can say that FOMO is triggered when I go offline. Moreover, FOMO is not always about the fear of missing out on something amazing. It can be something terrible, too. For instance, when I’m doing the dishes, I may think of the following things: “What if something happens to a family member, and I’m not there when they message me?” “What if I get an urgent email that I need to action on immediately?” “What if Israel has launched a large-scale attack and is now invading Southern Lebanon while I’m here soaping tea spoons and coffee mugs?” To be connected is to have access to (overwhelming) knowledge that you may or may not need. (And knowledge isn’t power, by the way.) On the other hand, to be disconnected is like swimming in the ocean at night, waiting for something from underwater to tickle your foot and make you shit your pants — or, in this case, your shorts.

The Return of the Lesser Tasks

This inner turmoil, this restlessness, this fear comes when I start soaping the second batch of dishware and silverware. It means that I’m now spending time with myself. And all the “secondary” tasks I previously postponed now occupy my thoughts. I feel guilty, and I worry about the consequences. Here they are, the ghosts of overdue tasks (and things that I wanted to do but didn’t), haunting me. It’s too late to do them now, and I have to decide whether I let them rot in my head (as buried potentialities) or do them anyway by saying, “It’s better too late than never.”

But I must now return to the artificial universe, which is the universe that man made. So, the house he built became his home. And he is home when he’s neither fully in the physical world nor fully in the virtual world. We’re only home when we’re in the hyperreal. But like the occasional hike in nature, it’s good to visit the desert of the real sometimes. It’s good to smell the flowers that bloom in fear. It’s good to hear the birds sing what we can never understand.

This piece was originally published on my Medium account on February 28, 2024.

Sunset Somewhere in Lebanon

Unstructured Reflections on Life: Normative Adversity

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

Normative adversity. — There are certain challenges (and obstacles) in life that we are, from the day we are born, expected to face. In most cases, it’s only a matter of time until we do so. Common challenges like family disputes and conflicts with romantic partners, job loss and other workplace issues, academic challenges, stress, aging, and life transitions like getting married or becoming a parent — they are called “normative” adversities precisely because they are normal (and predictable). Even if one takes preventive measures, he is bound to undergo (most of) them eventually. [Note: An excessive amount of preventive measures to keep normative adversities at bay, such as a zero-risk lifestyle, will only keep the person from living a fulfilling life. It’s fine if one is careful, as long as he isn’t too careful.] Although many such “normal” challenges are consequential, they are not (and shouldn’t be) too much to bear (in normal conditions). Society expects us to deal with them without making a lot of noise. Nonetheless, at different times in our Sisyphean pursuit of happiness and security, the boulder we continuously roll to the top of the mountain (or occasionally carry on our shoulders) gets heavier and heavier and heavier. Splinters of anxiety, bits of worries, flecks of inconveniences, and failures pile up and congregate to eventually form a massive crisis. We burn out. We halt. We fall. We lose. We are tempted to give up and let go of what we’ve been trying to achieve for so long. We ask ourselves, “Will I survive this one, or is this the end of the road for me? Will I be able to overcome this awe-inspiring, terrifying obstacle? What am I trying to hold on to? What am I trying to prove? Is it really worth it?” We almost always almost give up but don’t. This is when we remember that what we’re facing, even though it’s overwhelming, isn’t anything that is outside of the normal. Millions of people have experienced in their own way what we are experiencing now in our own way. It is a part of life, of the way the world works. So, even though the challenges we’re grappling with may seem or even are crippling, they’re bearably crippling. As long as there’s something to hold on to, they are like quicksand we can pull ourselves out of. But there are no guarantees, of course. We can purchase all the insurance plans in the world (health insurance, car insurance, home insurance, travel insurance, life insurance, etc.) and take all the security measures in the world (bodyguards, CCTVs, alarm systems, etc.) and still feel insecure. Why? Because nothing can protect us from life’s uncertainties. There’s no certainty of the future for anyone, and misfortunes are keen to knock on our doors. However, if we listen to our human spirit, we will know that it is not afraid, it wants to put up a fight, it wants to carry on. And, here, we can already hear the incantation of Samuel Beckett’s words in our hearts. First, the quote from The Unnamable that says, “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” [Even when it’s impossible to go on, when all hope is lost and the future is uninviting, we have no other choice but to take a step into the next moment. We’ve always been sliding downhill on the arrow of time, from our past towards our future, haven’t we? There’s only one direction. And we can imagine that the arrow of time extends downwards, not upwards or horizontally, because the future is the force of gravity that’s pulling everything down…] Second, another Samuel Beckett quote. This one is from the story called Worstward Ho, and it says, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” And I hope that, to no one’s surprise, the answer is always to keep on trying. The answer is to own it, face our fears, turn challenges into meaningful experiences, and transform boring tasks into caves we can explore, seas we can dive into. Understanding the concept of normative adversity and accepting it — that most of the challenges we face are normal — is the (only real) way to cope with our day-to-day struggles. We have the same unique challenges as the rest of the world population, and we must deal with them our own way. “When you have done this,” Schopenhauer writes, “you will order your expectations of life according to the nature of things and no longer regard the calamities, sufferings, torments and miseries of life as something irregular and not to be expected but will find them entirely in order, well knowing that each of us is here being punished for his existence and each in his own particular way.” [Note: we shouldn’t take punishment as the sad fate of every man here. Disagreeable things are the seasonings of life. Whether we like it or not, we must be a little masochistic to be able to enjoy being human. They say, “No pain, no gain.” The destination may be paradise for everyone, but the journey is for the few, for those who are ready to get hurt while paving new paths — the risk-takers and adventurers.] So, briefly put, what are we saying here? When it comes to normative adversities, all we need to do is take responsibility, deal with them (calmly), and carry on.