Dear LPG,

After a year of being locked down, loneliness and boredom have become the two main states of mindfulness that we have all become a lot closer to.  There is something important about knowing that you can do things if you want to, even if you never actually get around to doing them at all.   The one that is affecting us most now is freedom; the freedom to be able to go out and socialise if we want to.  I found myself recently coming to the realisation that perhaps happiness and freedom are linked more closely than we realise.

Perhaps the thing that the last year has taught us more than anything else is that it is not always being able to do the things that we want which upsets us.  The knowing that there is nothing stopping us is often much more important than doing whatever it is that has been prohibited.  We have been stopped from doing so many things that we don’t necessarily do that often and yet it is the fact that we cannot do them, even if we want to, which makes us unhappiest.

Covid-19 has become another word for solitude, and I know that, before it all started, I valued mine quite a lot, especially when it was not always available to me.  Now, like many others I find that loneliness really makes me quite unhappy.  

I read an online article recently about the difference between happiness and contentment and it got me to thinking about which of the two states of mind is most valuable to us, and which I would rather be able to say describes the positive aspects of my existence now.

I have to say it is something I never even thought about properly until reading what this writer had to say and, even though we are hopefully now on the way back to an existence without lockdown, I found this changed my perspective on whether my post isolation goal is to be happy or content…  

CC, Crofton Park.

CC shares the article mentioned in her message…

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