I woke up this morning filled with the world’s largest dose of ennui. Naturally this prompted me to begin thinking about the relentless entropy that is life. To truly lay in the drama of my state of mind I closed all the blinds and banished the light, it was not welcomed here.

What does it mean when we come to the moment of realisation that life is fleeting and that sense of hopelessness, an almost beautiful tragedy hits you. It hits you at your very core and you have nothing. There is nothing to help you recover from it and you can’t even bring yourself to get out of bed, let alone do anything.

This is where we are. South Africans are filled with ennui. Actually I feel that’s what’s happening right now in the world. We are at a critical inflection point in this never-ending pandemic where entropy is the mood. So many people are losing their jobs, their lives, their homes and their sense of safety. It is causing a vigorous state of ennui and not in the cool romantic way we have come to envy in movies and books. We are all having the longest duvet day and no one wants to get out of bed.

It’s hard to have real conversations with your friends because there’s only so much “I miss you you” you can say to them. How many more “I can’t wait for this to be over there” do you have left in you? We can’t think of any more normal words to say, there’s no more sentiment left. We have run out of expressions that just won’t end in listless conversation. It is tiring and we are all tired. People want to be optimistic about the future but the future is so cloudy and so frightening, we don’t even know if the concept of it is real.

We don’t find joy in the things that usually bring us joy. We are caught up in a cacophony of little anxieties and little terrors. Our homes are both prison and sanctuary. Some of us are too afraid to leave our house, worried about the terrors that await us. I have seen the future, the one where we are trapped in our homes for the rest of time. Amazon made a show about it, Solo, there’s a woman who was in her house for 20 years. For the pandemic never ends and even she is told it’s over she cannot trust to be truly done. She is what happens that relentless entropy grips you and won’t let go. It is hard to tell someone that it’ll be okay, because you actually don’t know if it will be okay.

So here’s what I do, because I really don’t know if it’ll be okay and that is okay. I think about the day I am in today, what I am feeling on that day. Because it is okay to not be okay. I try to find little joys and little wins. These can be anything in your day. If your little win is 4 hours of really bad TV, that makes you laugh while eating them ice cream in bed – I say go for it. I do the things that bring me the most comfort, like staying in bed all day to read. Turning my phone so the only thoughts and voices I bring to my space are mine. I find my little wins and I make them stay for as long as I can.

It is perfectly okay to not be okay, it’s okay. If you want to spend the day getting lost in your feelings, get lost in them. We need that sometimes. Someone I love dearly often gets lost and used to bother me because all I wanted to do was help and fix things. Soon, I realised that loss was necessary for them to gather strength to be there for me and others in their life. So, get lost in your feelings if you need to because the only way to get to the other side of hurt, heartbreak and pain, is through. We must walk through that desert of despair wrapped in the armour of our little wins.

The world is filled with ennui and it may never fully recover. So I spent two days reading Jane Austen and it brought me comfort and joy.