Do Not Panic or Rage; Learn to Grow Through Hardship

From the start of the pandemic to the present, people worldwide have been deeply affected. From early 2020 until now, the number of people seeking psychological support worldwide has risen sharply. Recent WHO data show that in the first year after the outbreak, the global prevalence of anxiety and depression rose by 25%. A WHO scientific brief states that one explanation for this increase is the unprecedented psychological pressure brought by social isolation. Loneliness, fear of infection, the suffering or death of oneself or loved ones, grief after bereavement, and economic worries may all be linked to the high incidence of post-pandemic anxiety and depression.

Damage to the nervous system by COVID-19 also causes some patients to develop sequelae such as depression and Alzheimer's disease after recovery. A study published on March 15, 2022 in The Lancet Public Health showed that severe COVID-19 patients have a 50%–60% higher risk of depression and anxiety than ordinary people. In addition, WHO notes that overwork has led many health workers to contemplate suicide after the outbreak, and even more to resign. Pandemic disruption has also disturbed mental health services; mental-health lifeline services including suicide prevention have been seriously disrupted during the pandemic. So the mental-health problems caused by the pandemic are only the tip of the iceberg.

For the Chinese public, the first half of 2020 and the year 2022 will both be extremely trying periods. Recently, Omicron has spread rapidly in Hong Kong and much of the Chinese mainland, affecting many people's work and lives and leaving many with worrisome mental health.

Perhaps you, like me, have been affected by negative news—pandemic, war, natural disasters, economic downturn—and your mood is not as good as before; this shows we are all normal people. I cite these figures not to deepen panic but to tell readers: we are not alone, and people across the world feel much the same as we do. Normal emotional reactions are a self-protection mechanism formed as we survived in nature; when a predator threatening the flock appears on the grassland, the sheep panic and run in all directions, because only so can they escape danger. If we felt none of these negative emotions during pandemic, war, natural disaster, and recession, it would suggest we are not quite normal.

Tolstoy said: when we understand everything, we can forgive everything. It seems to me that when we understand everything, we can not only forgive everything but also relax a great deal. In the current prolonged tense situation, we must let our minds grow and learn to understand. When patients seek help from a psychotherapist, the therapist first helps them understand their own illness, because mere understanding already relieves more than half the suffering.

After the pandemic began, my income fell by more than half. In the earliest days I did worry; after all, I have elderly parents above and children below, and I must feed a family. But I soon understood that this was the general trend, that life would be harder than before, and that this state would last for many years. Yet it has not reached the point where we cannot get by; basic food and water supplies are not a problem, and however bad things get, we will not starve.

Social separation made it harder to meet relatives, but I later unexpectedly found that communication with relatives had actually increased, because we made more phone calls than before. I installed a camera at my old home and can see the elderly there every day and chat with them a few words. So as long as we want to communicate with relatives and friends, we can always find ways to interact with those we care about.

I have also felt anger toward this society. Last year, when I returned to my hometown, I saw a disabled person in our village recruited to do some public-service work, merely because among the left-behind villagers he was relatively young and could still keep up with the times; the rest of the elderly could barely use smartphones.

At that moment I suddenly understood how difficult grassroots work in China is. Large numbers of outstanding talents gather in first-tier cities, and ordinary young people go elsewhere to work. Except for a few first- and second-tier cities, incomes in most places in China cannot attract these people, even in civil service, because the pay is simply too low; so the efficiency of grassroots society is bound to disappoint.

When I was a child, if a home in our village caught fire, all the able-bodied villagers rushed to help put it out in a moment. But now, if a fire breaks out in the village, it is hard to find able-bodied people to fight it. Having understood the reality caused by this developmental trend, I no longer resent the shortcomings of grassroots work.

Yesterday two acquaintances contacted me. One was a colleague, a chief physician at a Grade-A tertiary hospital in Guangdong; she messaged me to take care, saying she was so exhausted lately she could barely keep her eyes open, yet was still fighting the pandemic while lamenting that outbreaks in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou might cost many patients the chance of treatment they could otherwise receive. The other was my older brother working in Shenzhen; on the phone he told me there were some unsatisfactory aspects to nucleic-acid testing in their housing estate, and that after he and several others filed complaints, things improved and the government sent a few more doctors.

This is typical of the bad feelings that arise between people in different positions because they do not understand one another. I urged my brother, for the sake of his own younger brother being a physician, not to make things harder at such a moment for health workers already exhausted, some of whom, being psychologically fragile, were tired enough to contemplate suicide.

If we analyze from the broad developmental trend, humanity is now shifting from a past consumption-oriented society to a conservation-oriented one, because the Earth is overburdened. Everything happening now that makes us feel loss is simply because we are going through a great historical transition from a peak to a trough.

But this is not to say the process holds only pain and no joy. In fact, as long as we shift from the old idea of taking pleasure in endlessly expanding life to a life philosophy of taking pleasure in low desire, we will not live in agony. Low desire is indeed a kind of happiness, because it means less toil and more leisure, allowing a lighter life.

Human adaptability to the environment exceeds our imagination; we always find delights under all conditions. Human history tells us that our happiness has in fact fluctuated: some eras bring pleasure through consumption and development, others through economy and ease. We can clearly feel this in the poetry and prose of writers and thinkers of different eras; Buddhist-casual writings tend to prevail in times of great pressure, while high-spirited poetry flourishes in prosperous, booming eras.

The environment affects our mood, but we can also adjust our mood to fit the environment; this is the result of billions of years of evolution in our genes. Much of our discomfort comes from outside information; in this age of information overflow, we must learn to filter out uncomfortable information. Reading less current-affairs news and receiving less emotional messaging from extremists can improve our mood.

When we successfully reduce pressure on ourselves amid hardship, our mind achieves a major elevation. Hardship does not only torment us; it also promotes our growth.