Article

Attention

Change

Joy

30 May 2023

4 min read

Life lessons from the pup

A new arrival reminds Natalie Garrett how to learn much about a life of simplicity and joy.

Natalie Garrett

Natalie produces and narrates The Seen & Unseen Aloud podcast. She's an Anglican minister and a trained actor.

Life coaching can be tiring.

So finally, we caved. We bought the puppy. We had been strong and resolute in our parenting decision to say no in the face of almost daily requests over a period of probably three years. But when we moved out of London recently, we relented and got a puppy.

We have had him for nearly a month now. He’s 98 per cent fluff and utterly glorious. He is taking us back to the early days of having our own human puppies – you mustn’t let him out of your sight for a second or he’ll a) be literally under your feet so you tread on him, b) be eating something disgusting you didn’t know was hiding under the sofa or c) well, you can guess what c) is.

But what I hadn’t reckoned on, when I collected this beautiful ball of snuffliness from his breeder, was that he would turn into my life coach. I have learnt so much about life – and specifically how to live it well – in the last couple of weeks, just by watching the way he lives his life.

For our puppy, everything is an adventure.

“Someone’s opening a door! What excitement awaits on the other side?”

“Oh you’ve leant down to talk to me – maybe if I lie on my back, you will give my tummy a rub?”

And so on.

Occasionally, he expresses sadness because everyone’s left the room and he can’t follow us upstairs. But otherwise, his glass (or bowl) isn’t just half full, it’s brimming over. As long as he’s been fed, he’s warm, he’s been let out to do what a dog’s got to do and (most importantly) he’s been shown love and affection, he’s happy and trusting. And then falls asleep, paws akimbo.

Somewhere, I read that in the Bible there are 365 statements variously translated as “do not worry”, “do not be afraid”, “do not be anxious”. 365. One for every day of the year. And even if that rather neat number isn’t actually accurate (although how amazing if it were true), clearly the Bible has a recurring theme around worry, fear and anxiety. Perhaps this most human of conditions is not such a new phenomenon as we think. God has been addressing issues of mental health for hundreds and thousands of years.

Jesus talked about it a lot. He addressed it head on in one of his most famous teaching sessions:

‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?’

In my puppy, I see (mercifully not a bird flying around) a creature who trusts that he’s going to be looked after. He trusts that he will have food and love so he is free to enjoy chasing a ball or chewing a stick. He models to me the very wisdom of Jesus. He doesn’t overcomplicate his life, he just lives it. As people, we seem to experience life as endlessly complicated. And, of course, sometimes it really is. Some of us carry all sorts of responsibilities that are very complicated indeed. Some of us don’t have our most basic needs met and that’s awful. I pray we can find and help those around us in that situation. But for most of us, most of the time, life really isn’t that complicated. If we have enough food, clothes on our back, somewhere warm to shelter and someone to share love with, that’s a good life right there. If we are privileged to have our basic needs provided for then maybe we can worry less and enjoy more. But for some reason, it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Like countless others, I have carried with me the shadow of depression for many years. Through CBT and other therapies, I have had to learn new ways of thinking to keep the light on, as it were, and the darkness at bay. In this battle, Jesus’ words provide powerful ballast against the tidal waves of the depressive storm. He encourages us to choose, by an act of will, to fill our minds with truth and with the evidence of good things: the promise of his faithful provision, thus forcing out the lies of the darkness. As we choose to fill our minds with the knowledge and love of God, there is less room for worry and anxiety and we find rest for our minds. This choice brings freedom and the space for joy to grow. And, as we have come to realise in recent years, this battle is real for all of us, in different ways and to different extents.

Wonderfully, my puppy seems to have excellent mental health. When Winston Churchill spoke of his own “black dog”, I don’t think he was talking about a bouncing ball of fur begging for a tummy rub. But as I fill my mind with thoughts of Jesus and my puppy, I will continue to learn much about a life of simplicity and joy. And I am grateful to my children, wise beyond their years, who were instrumental in bringing this puppy/life coach into our family.

Article

Attention

Culture

Digital

Ghosting

Psychology

2 July 2024

5 min read

Ghosting is not immature, it’s plain cruel

The dehumanising behaviour hiding in plain sight.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen.

On a dark street someone checks their mobile phone for messages.

‘Do you really believe that the moon only exists when you look at it?’

It’s a great question. Do you know who asked it? It sounds rather Shakespearean, doesn’t it? It’s got a touch of the – ‘that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’ - about it.

But not so.

Interestingly, it was Albert Einstein who asked this question. He asked it again and again – unable to relax into any answer his contemporaries could offer him. He thought, at least initially, that he was asking a question about quantum physics. But he wasn’t; not really. Einstein was asking what it means to exist, what it means to be.

And that means that he was actually asking a theological question. And I, for one, would appreciate it if we would get into the habit of asking it too, just phrased a little differently. I’d like us to ask something a little like:

‘Do you really believe that the person only exists when you text them back?’

Yes, I’m imploring us all to take an Einstein-esque approach to the phenomenon of ‘ghosting’.

Ghosting, just to make sure that we’re all one the same page, is the act of abruptly and completely cutting off all forms of contact with another person, offering no form of prior warning nor any kind of subsequent explanation. To ghost someone is to perform a social cut and run, a relational dine-and-dash, if you will. This, of course, can happen in all kinds of contexts – in work situations, in friendships, and in the most niche of circumstances. There’s an incredibly popular podcast, the title of which – ‘My Therapist Ghosted Me’ - is a tongue in cheek reference to one of the presenters being inexplicably cut off by their own therapist. Ouch.

And so, ghosting causes a social injury, it inflicts a heart wound. Being ghosted, we are coming to realise, is a rejection of the most absolute kind.

But where this phenomenon is reaching astounding heights is in the context of romantic relationships. The technological age in which we live, where the majority of romantic relationships are now being initiated and established online, has meant that we’ve got ghosting down to a fine art. It’s become all too easy. And apparently, nobody is immune.

Just recently, Billie Eilish – Oscar and Grammy award winning musical genius and all-round cultural icon - explained how she had recently been the victim of an almighty ghosting. She said,

‘it was insane. I was like – “did you die? Have you literally died?” It was somebody that I’d known for years, we had a plan (to meet) and the day of… nothing. I never heard from him again.’

Imagine being ignored so suddenly and completely that your first instinct is that the person must have died, only to realise – they hadn’t died, you were just disposable to them. This is happening all of the time, there’s a generation of people who are having their sense of self and of the ‘other’ defined by this very phenomenon.

What’s incredibly interesting is that in the span of a few short years, psychologists and relationship therapists have gone from speaking of ‘ghosting’ in terms of emotional immaturity, conflict avoidance and a lack of communication skills, to regarding it as a form of cruelty and even abuse.

It is not primarily the intent of the ‘ghost’ that is causing psychologists to speak of ghosting in increasingly serious terms. Most ‘ghosts’ are cowardly, perhaps, but not sheer evil. Rather, it is the extraordinary depths of hurt that the behaviour inflicts (intended or not) upon the person who has been victim to it.

We are learning that there are all manner of harmful things that ghosting does to our brains and all kinds messages that it sends to our self-esteem. Namely, that we weren’t enough for that person, that we’ve failed somehow, that we’re disposable, that we misread the situation, that we misread them, that we’re deficient in almost every kind of way.

These lies inevitably fill the gaps left by the silence of the other person. False explanations, usually of the most self-depreciating kind, take advantage of that fact that no explanation was offered by the person who hurt us. The bewilderment itself becomes a form of torture. And so, ghosting causes a social injury, it inflicts a heart wound. Being ghosted, we are coming to realise, is a rejection of the most absolute kind.

Ghosting is the symptom of a society in which we kid ourselves into thinking that people only come to life when our thoughts turn to them or our eyes rest on them.

But I think there’s even more to it. And this is where I return to Einstein’s question, and my modern, admittedly much less cosmic, re-imagining of it. Because underneath it all, I think that ghosting is a theological issue.

To ghost someone is to act as if they do not exist because you have averted your gaze from them. It is, therefore, to deprive them of the fullness of their existence. Or, at least, to deny it. It is an act of deep diminishment. Do we really believe that the moon only exists when it is looked upon? Ghosting forces us to similarly ask – do we believe that we only exist when we are looked upon?

So, you see, it goes deep. It cuts to the core of what it means to be.

Ghosting is the symptom of a society in which we kid ourselves into thinking that people only come to life when our thoughts turn to them or our eyes rest on them. If we can’t see the suffering we’ve caused, it isn’t happening. If we’ve cut someone out of our life, they aren’t existing. At least, we can behave as if they aren’t.

One could argue that it’s a form of dehumanization, one that’s hidden in plain sight.

And that, alongside all of the other reasons (or perhaps undergirding them), is the reason that I think being ghosted cuts us to the core; it brings into question the very reality of our existence.

‘Do you really believe that the moon only exists when you look at it?’

Einstein’s question may feel a little abstract but it’s actually as tangible and personal as it gets.