We are now at the point where we have to learn to do nothing. At least, to allow ourselves not to feel that idleness is a waste of time, and not to feel anxious when we cannot be at work, learning, or keeping up with the world every five minutes. In this age of information overload, where social media and our smartphones trade on our attention, five minutes is the new forty-five minutes, the new unit of time for which we can all perhaps concentrate on one thing. At least not fifteen seconds, as was recently predicted on social media platforms – where there is now a demand for more elaborate five to ten minute content.
Júlia Standovár’s Everyday dilemmas is about everyday failures, the psychology of decision-making, and different forms of anxiety. The opening piece in the series also deals with the aforementioned five minutes. The title 5 minute rule refers to a simple method for everyday life that comes up in a therapeutic conversation: if you find it difficult to start the morning or feel unmotivated even to get out of bed, make an attempt, choose a task from your daily to-do list and set a goal of doing it for five minutes.
If you can’t do it after that, then go back to bed (if you can), and if you get going, you’ll be long past five minutes before you realise you’re almost done. It’s good to have those five minutes, it’s good to be aware that such a small slice of time can make a whole day meaningful. We usually think of time limits, weekly calendar pages, our wristwatches as obstacles, as constraints, and we think less often that, like all constraints, we can cling to them.
The images in Everyday dilemmas are built on the repetitive patterns of meaningful routines, the sense of confinement, that were intensified during the quarantine period under COVID. Little is said about the immediate threat to life from the coronavirus outbreak, and almost nothing about its psychological effects, while we sense that something has changed since the quarantine. Isolation, inactivity and boredom have had an extremely bad effect on the lonely, with many experiencing episodes of depression and those already prone to anxiety being further aggravated. For some, the only way to survive the quarantine was to take alcohol, antidepressants or other mind-altering drugs.
We did not even have to be directly affected by the social media news cycle, we could live through the fear of death and other anxiety without it, and many of these experiences have stayed with us ever since. And in such a state, even the smallest decisions seem life-changing, and even the most insignificant things and events are imprinted on our current state of mind: the hot bath vs. In the dilemma of whether to take a hot shower or the future of the planet, five minutes of intense happiness are at stake, a peach moulding in the kitchen reminds us of our own finitude, on certain days we cry at the sight of spilled water, but our bad mood can suddenly disappear as soon as we step out onto the street and see someone or something smiling at us.
Emese Mucsi