On Re-Enchantment

Or, How to Look Up

Photo by Gary Whyte on Unsplash

Last December, I wrote what is without doubt the most depressing essay of my life. I decided not to publish it because my parents have both subscribed to my Substack and I didn’t want either of them to worry about me. So I let it marinate for a while, and used the arguments I’d written as conversation points with various friends and colleagues.

Two months passed, and I couldn’t help but keep returning to the essay. It developed a life of its own, and I felt like it wanted to be published.

So, on the 1st February, I suppressed my inner-cringe and made it available to the internet. The title of this post was Dear Boomers, This is Why Millennials Don’t Feel Motivated to Work Anymore, and by Substack standards, it went viral.

I still can’t believe how generous people were towards this piece. If you haven’t already, please do give it a read and let me know what you think.

Throughout the essay, I argue that Millennials aren’t burning out from work, but rather from a series of heavy existential burdens, coupled with a lack of hope. Towards the end I talk about the crisis of disenchantment, and our collective need to re-engage with a sense of wonder and awe.

Many of you have asked me to write a follow-on essay specifically on how to respond to the many crises I laid out.

I am going to let others write about the mental health and economic crises because I bring no expertise to either of those conversations.

However, I do want to talk about cultivating hope and practising re-enchantment. If we can at least work on our own heart postures, perhaps we can respond better to problems I stated in my last essay. Who knows, maybe we can tackle these issues with a spark of creativity and a non-anxious demeanour.

In his remarkable book, The Master and His Emissary, Iain McGilchrist outlines how the two sides of the brain - known as hemispheres - perceive the world in different ways. The right-brain is known as the “Master”, and is the more holistic side that has an appreciation for nuance and context. By contrast, the left-brain, or the “Emissary” as McGilchrist calls it, is more analytical, detail oriented, and compartmentalised.

You may have heard of “right-brain” versus “left-brain” people. A crude overview would say that those who are naturally right-brain oriented tend to have a greater appreciation for the arts, and often have very good people skills. Your quintessential left-brain person would have excelled in science and maths at school, and might have grown up to become an excellent accountant.

McGilchrist doesn’t seem to be as interested in this individualistic approach. Instead, he focuses on Western culture as a whole, arguing that it has become dominated by the left hemisphere’s tendencies, leading to a more fragmented, reductionist, and mechanistic view of the world.

He doesn’t seem to think that the left-brain is inherently wrong, but he does argue that it should be subordinate to the right-brain in order for society to flourish. He argues that when the left hemisphere becomes dominant, it distorts the balance, reducing the richness of human experience and undermining creativity, empathy, and intuition.

McGilchrist’s thesis has affected me deeply. As a highly intuitive, touchy-feely, artsy-fartsy dyslexic with hardly any interest in facts or details, I think it is safe to say that I am naturally a “right-brain” sort of person.

Given that society naturally favours left-brain modes of thinking, I would like to suggest that if we want to re-enchant our culture and bring hope to the younger generations, we need to be intentional about practising right-brain activities.

The thesis of my last essay was that we have designed a world that discourages awe, wonder and enchantment. As a result, Millennials and Gen Z are simply not flourishing.

So, as a right-brain person, here are my tips on how to re-engage this part of your mind, and hopefully learn how to re-enchant your life. I can’t promise that wars will end, or that our economic situation will get any better. But I do believe we should defend hope and learn to “look up,” as this will impact the way we respond to terrible circumstances.

Most of these are things you already know you should do. But remember, they can only be effective if you actually do them.

As always, please add your ideas to the comment section. I’d love to hear them.

1. Go Outside

I don’t just mean your 15 minute mental health walk during the day (although this is important). But really get into the Great Outdoors, if you can. Nothing compares to that feeling of gazing at the stars on a clear night when there is no light pollution.

I have had the privilege of being connected to nature at various points of my life, and I am aware that this is a rare experience for my generation.

Nearly ten years ago, I returned to India having lived there previously, and spent eight weeks on a writing retreat, staying in a little hut in the foothills of the Himalayas. It was as minimalist as it could be, with no wifi, no hot water, and limited electricity. My shower was a bucket of cold water with a cup.

During this time, there was no need to keep a phone or a watch. I naturally woke fifteen minutes before sunrise because that was when the monkeys would start running up and down the tin roof. I would tire a couple of hours after sunset and go to bed when I felt like it.

I didn’t have to go to the gym because simply existing was a workout. I had to hand-wash all my laundry, which took plenty of hours and upper arm strength. I would hike 5km up a hill to the nearest village if I ever needed something from a shop.

Every morning I would sit on my porch at around 4:45/5am and watch the birds as the sun came up. I honestly can’t remember a happier time in my life.

The jungle was never silent because it is fully alive. In childhood, I was taught that “everything is connected.” I knew this in my left-brain. But immersing myself in the jungle forced me to engage my right-brain and actually feel it.

Me looking ten years younger at Sattal Christian Ashram

At this point it would be easy to romanticise the natural world, but I should hasten to add that it is also terrifying. One morning I woke up to the warden banging on my door urgently. He needed to check that I was still alive because a tiger had been sighted right next to my hut in the night.

I’ve never liked snakes, and I saw plenty of those. And scorpions. And leeches.

I despise leeches.

The monsoon arrived towards the end of my time there; it felt like a giant bucket of water had been tipped from the heavens. Monsoon has a way of making you feel incredibly small.

The philosopher Edmund Burke calls this feeling, “the sublime.”

Despite all the dangers and difficulties, I always look back on that time as the season when I felt the most alive. Upon returning to the UK, people kept remarking that I had a peaceful spirit about me, and they wanted to know my secret.

The secret is this: go outside. Do it properly for an extended period of time. The world is a big place, and I believe every human needs to experience the sublime. It saddens me that so many young people never do.

I appreciate that in a time of economic uncertainty, this may be the last thing on your mind. But if it is at all possible, please do try and have an “outdoorsy” holiday at least once a year. Go wild-camping. Visit a National Park. If you have the means, save up for the trip of a lifetime and go on an African safari. It will invigorate your soul and teach you to connect with yourself and the land in ways you never thought were possible.

I’ve recently been re-watching old Disney classics for nostalgic purposes, and the other night I watched Tarzan, which I don’t think I’ve seen since it first came out in 1999. (Side note: I was furious to discover water pouring out of my face within the first three minutes. I hold Phil Collins solely responsible.)

The following day I was walking around the city centre where I live, and I kept wondering what it would be like to encounter our modern world if you were someone like Tarzan, or someone from a tribal community in the Amazon. I imagined trying to explain what cars are, and how we fuel them. What about plastic? Where does all the rubbish go? Why don’t people talk to one another? Why doesn’t anybody have a connection with the land?

In all honesty, I can’t help but think that if a person grew up in the wild and then encountered Western modernity, the adjustment would be deeply traumatising.

I am now wondering whether there is a wild person inside all of us. Perhaps your inner wild-woman or wild-man is perpetually in distress because you are not living the way you are supposed to.

2. Make Something

I don’t care if you’re not the “artsy” sort. I don’t even care if the thing you make is particularly good. Just have a go, and then keep doing it. You’ll eventually get better at your craft and be able to proudly show what you made to the world.

You don’t have to enjoy the elite culture that is now associated with the world of fine art. In fact, I’d recommend staying clear of it. But try, if you can, to engage in some sort of creativity. Nothing beats the feeling of holding something in your hand that previously did not exist and saying, “I made that!”

Linocut

If you’re struggling for inspiration, it’s ok to copy someone else. Go sit in a free art gallery or in front of a tree or a building you like, and bring a pencil and sketchbook. The art of sketching is ultimately the art of seeing. Learn how to see the world, don’t just rush through it.

You don’t have to make art for an audience. In fact, I think there’s something special about making something just for sheer enjoyment of creating. I wrote some poems in my teenage years that I hope nobody ever reads, but I’m still glad that I wrote them.

That being said, if you are the creative sort and you do have an audience, it is worth asking whether your work is cultivating hope in a world that ultimately feels hopeless. What are you bringing to a generation that needs to re-engage its right-brain?

I think the reason I am drawn to the old Disney Classics at the moment is that there is something safe about the happily-ever-after ending. Boomers love to tell young people that this is not a reflection of real life. This may be true, but in all honesty, I don’t think that is the point of storytelling!

Stories, music, and the arts are not supposed to be objective. They’re not scientific observations. They’re supposed to make you feel something.

3. Prioritise Friendships

I have to confess, this a “do as I say, not as I do” point, so I’m going to defer to Simon Sinek and Trevor Noah for this.

Sinek remarks,

“There is an entire industry to help you be a better leader. There’s an entire industry to help you be a better parent. There’s an entire industry dedicated to help you eat better, exercise better, sleep better. And yet there’s barely anything on how to be a better friend.”

This strikes me as both deeply troubling and deeply true.

I personally believe that we have sacrificed friendships on three altars: our careers, our romantic relationships, and our personal brands.

First, we have chosen to sacrifice friendships on the altars of work and careers. I am very guilty of this. I can tell you from personal experience that when life gets hard and you hit rock bottom, your work won’t be there for you. Your friends will.

Choose your friends wisely in the high points of life, and invest in them heavily. I can promise you with absolute certainty that the low points will reveal the quality of your friendships, or indeed whether you have any real friends at all.

Second, we have sacrificed friendships in the pursuit of finding “the one.”

Trevor Noah states,

“We shouldn’t take for granted how much the abandoning or ignoring of friendship has affected romantic relationships. People have now shifted all of the expectation, all of the support, all of the love that they would have got from a community of friends, and they’ve moved it onto one person.”

I couldn’t agree more. We have now placed far too much pressure and expectation on romantic partners, to the detriment of both romance and singleness.

Those who are married/partnered can often find that their significant other will eventually disappoint because they are unable to meet all of their needs and expectations.

Let me be abundantly clear: there is not one person on the planet who can do that for you. By expecting your partner to fulfill the role of an entire community, you risk setting your relationship up to fail from the start.

Moreover, those who are single feel that their life is incomplete until they level-up and find “the one.” We sacrifice time with our friends to anxiously date as many strangers from the internet as possible, and then we wonder why we feel so lonely and depressed all of the time.

Lastly, we sacrifice our friendships on the altar of our personal brand. One of the biggest myths we have inherited from empire culture is the myth that we have to appear to be smart, strong and successful. All of the time.

The mask of bravado is a surefire way to kill intimacy. Again, I know this to be true from personal experience.

One of the biggest areas of growth during my health battle was learning to allow people to take care of me when I actually needed it. I had to learn how to tell people when I was having a bad day. This was one of the hardest parts of that season.

Being physically vulnerable has a way of revealing inbuilt pride that has been there all along. Learning to overcome that pride is the best way to become a better friend and a better person.

In the words of Simon Sinek, “We don’t build trust by offering help, we build trust by asking for it.”

Vulnerability leads to intimacy.

4. Try Prayer

I don’t care if you do it in a cathedral, a forest, or over your breakfast cereal in the morning.

I'm not asking you to like the institution of the church, or swallow every aspect of organised religion whole.

But give prayer a go.

See what happens.

If you don’t know where to start and you need trainer wheels, there are plenty of apps and online resources that can help, which I will list at the end.

But, if at all possible, try doing it without your phone. I find that when I use prayer apps, my Instagram addiction is such a distraction that I end up scrolling through the prayer as quickly as possible so that I can then switch over to the regular dopamine hit of memes. (You might not be like me, so by all means give the apps a go if they’re the right thing for you).

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

A lot of people are uncomfortable with prayer because of its associations with religious groups that have either damaged them personally or been exposed for abuse in the media. I fully understand the difficulties this entails. But, if you are able to recognise that these people are not the best representatives of any religion, it is worth at least giving prayer a go.

I’ve heard many people say that they would prefer meditation to prayer. I’m not against meditation. As a Christian, I regularly meditate, and would recommend that everybody do the same. Meditation was a central practice to the early church Mothers and Fathers, so it’s a pretty big deal for Christianity.

The reason why I recommend trying prayer is because it is more relational than meditation. The latter requires some kind of sustained attention to an object or an action, like breathing or reading a word over and over again. These are all good things. But prayer differs in that it forces you to look up and talk to a being that is bigger than you.

A great place to start is, “God, I’m not sure if you are there, but if you are, _____.”

One of the most remarkable phenomena that I have ever encountered is the 12-Step Programme for people struggling with addiction. Since I work in the prison space, I have encountered a large number of addicts and recovering addicts who all swear by it.

As I understand things, one of the core aspects to the success of the 12-Steps is a person’s willingness to accept help from a Higher Power, “as [you] understand it.” There is no obligation to join a fundamentalist cult, but there is an obligation to recognise your own powerlessness, and to surrender to something - someone - bigger than you.

I know it might be uncomfortable, but try prayer, and see what happens.

You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Final Thoughts

The key to re-enchantment is connection.

If you want to feel fully alive, learn to be connected. Become connected with yourself. Become connected with others. Become connected with the land. And, if you are willing, become connected to a Higher Power.

This requires an enormous amount of vulnerability, which to be frank, most modern Westerners find terrifying. We have spent our whole lives being conditioned to move in the opposite direction, so this will require patience.

A good piece of advice is start where you are, not where you want to be. Make small, reasonable goals before setting your sights on the larger ones.

In sum, it is my belief that every human is born to love and be loved. Our society has not been built with this in mind, and we are suffering for it.

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A Caveat

There are plenty of other things I could have included in this essay. I was tempted to add “quit porn, video games and TickTock” to the list. However, I decided that for the purposes of this piece, I wanted to focus on addition rather than subtraction.

I recommend giving the above four points your best shot, and see whether your desire for social media, video games, porn etc naturally decreases. If you find that you still can’t break a dependency, then please do seek professional help.

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Recommended Resources

On Prayer:

24-7 Prayer

Lectio365 (Ecumenical)

Hallow (Catholic)

TryPraying.org (Protestant)

Support for Porn Addictions:

FightTheNewDrug (non-religious)

Magdala (for women only, run by Catholics but open to women of all faiths and none)

People who are smarter than me and are already talking about Re-enchantment:

Justin Brierly and Belle Tindall have a podcast literally called ‘Re-enchanting.’

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Things to be hopeful about:

Simon Clark brings some good news about climate change

More young people are engaging with spirituality than their parents. Learn more on The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God book and podcast series by Justin Brierly.

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Thanks for reading, and let me know how you get on.

Peace,

S