It's not fun to be sick anywhere, especially far from your usual creature comforts, but I feel lucky that I have a very comfortable house that's accessible to shops, doctors, and pharmacies. My sympathetic roommates have offered me as much solace as possible and in turn, I have followed myself around with a bottle of Dettol (bleach solution) in attempts not to infect them. I don't think it's working; one of them already has a sore throat; that was the first sign of my personal plague too. Well, it was fun not to have enemies while it lasted.
While lying comatose on my bed unable to move, I've been pondering about the concepts of health, self-care, and pleasure across the two countries I am most familiar with thus far - England and the US.
My overall thesis is that having good health is comprised of many components, two of which are self-care and pleasure. Both of these are equally important to the overall picture of health (along with lots of other pieces of being healthy which I won't discuss here). In the US we don't know the difference between self-care and pleasure, and this harms our health; in England, the difference between these concepts is a big part of their attitudes towards health.
In general English people seem to prize their well-being more than Americans. This isn't really news to anyone. The US has a big problem with slowing down. We have a billion dollar diet industry, gyms packed full of devotees, and magazines devoted to Zen living, yoga, and eating "clean". This is all called self-care and it's EVERYWHERE: Instagram, online news articles, blogs, Facebook. It seems I can't go a day without hearing about self-care and it's quite honestly making me feel sick to my stomach. Self-care has become stressful and filled with to-dos: Write in your journal. Paint watercolors. Practice yoga. Breathe. Practice tai chi while listening to Enya and wearing purple. Do this, and you'll feel better!
But when we Americans get sick, when we are pregnant, or when our mental health suffers, it's far less common to see people taking days off work and actually attending to their health in practical ways. It's not culturally valued. In many minimum wage jobs, sick days don't even exist. Why is it socially acceptable to meditate for ten minutes a day (at 6 am, after six hours of sleep, after your third cup of coffee) but not actually take a full weekend off of emails or take a sick day when you have the common cold?
Even when Americans are trying to relax, there's a to-do list. The overall message is that self-care will bring you health. In essence, it's just more of the American way: doing things will make you feel better, but not being productive won't.
This is not a nuanced perspective. I don't buy this. Self-care does feel satisfying and it is most certainly necessary. Sometimes, it can bring pleasure, and if it does for you, great. I do practice yoga; sometimes it is the best thing in the world, but sometimes it just feels like a drag. At those occasions I either stop doing it or I continue because I know it will help me sleep better and feel more centered (or because I've already paid for the damn class). But I'd argue people also practice self-care when they grocery shop and schedule a doctors appointments. It's meal prepping and washing linens. It's not always fun but it's usually necessary and when it's over it's satisfying to have finished that task.
Self-care DOES NOT EQUAL pleasure. Some self-care activities can be pleasurable, no doubt, but not always. Pleasure, for me, is what consistently brings me joy without fear that it's not productive. Pleasure is taking an ambling walk without counting my steps or calories burned. It's drinking tea without worrying if it has adaptogens in the brew. It's watching geese fly over a river and breathing in the fall air. It's lying in the grass without checking my phone.
Self-care and pleasure are two huge, mostly separate pieces of health, but in American culture we get them confused. They're not the same and one doesn't necessarily lead to the other. But they are both necessary. What's the point of practicing self-care to be healthy if we don't actually stop to enjoy and savor our healthy bodies and minds every once in a while (aka pleasure)?
Cats epitomize this concept. Their idea of self-care is to clean themselves and that is a CHORE. And the rest of their time is focused on pleasure: taking naps in the sunshine, having their cheeks scratched, meowing at their food bowl, sitting in the grass watching the world pass them by.
And I think that British people recognize the differences much more too. Firstly, they see the need for pleasure-filled relaxation. To start, most jobs offer 24-28 paid days of vacation per year. This means they can take off days even when they aren't travelling or getting their oil changed in their car. They can just take a day off for pleasure once in a while. This isn't just for full time office workers. I looked at a job positing once for a part time employee at a YMCA. The pay was 10,000 pounds a year, so not amazing. But the annual leave was 25 days off per year! As for maternity leave, by contrast to our three months of (unpaid, not guaranteed) maternity leave in the States, England guarantees 6 months paid maternity leave and up to a year off.
I think an interesting piece of the British attitude towards health is the National Health Service. The NHS is essentially free health care for all run by the government. I paid into the NHS when I got my visa and now I have free health care for a year - free doctors' visit, free flu shot, and very cheap prescriptions and dental visits.
Is it the most fantastic system ever? No. Is it a way that every citizen has the ability to go to a doctor regularly and also not worry if they'll break the bank? Yes. And does it keep people more or less healthy in a reasonable time frame? Absolutely. Essentially, it enables people to affordably, realistically practice self-care.
I talked with my roommate about the NHS; she said it could take months for surgeries to happen. I was surprised. But then I asked if you'd get care for a surgery for a tumor right away; the answer was yes, that would be prioritized. Same with a heart surgery or other life threatening condition. But not for non-necessary surgeries, she added. I wasn't really surprised by any of this. In the US, most surgeries that need to be happen in a timely basis will happen; if the surgery is elective or for a non-life threatening condition, it takes a lot longer. This is the same in England. But the difference is their tax dollars pay for this and ours don't. We pay MORE money for our insurance on top of taxes.
A few days after this conversation, I had lunch at the house of two congregants of my church. The husband found out only seven years ago, well into his seventies, that he had Celiac disease. And as a result, he gets sent EIGHT loaves of gluten free bread and a bag of gluten free rolls each month paid for by the NHS. I was amazed and expressed as much. The wife sniffed and said disdainfully, "But the bread tastes horrible." Good Lord people. The last time I complained about free food was...let me check... oh right, NEVER.
The British attitude isn't, Oh what a privilege to have health care; it's, Oh this is our right and it had better be good. If you take away the entitlement inherent in this attitude (which, frankly, really annoys me) I think the Brits have a very good point. We should all be offered good health care by the government - isn't the government supposed to provide for our needs and don't we pay the taxes in order to do that?
So how does this relate to pleasure and self-care? A free national health system doesn't make people choose between having health insurance and paying for other things; it allows people to prioritize their self-care without forgoing pleasurable activities that also contribute to a healthy body, mind, and spirit.
While I was thinking about all this, I simultaneously felt like utter crap. After a grand total of six hours of sweaty sleep on Thursday night, I just wanted to be at home where I could reach into the bathroom cupboard and grab my Sudafed and Chloraseptic lozenges. I didn't have any food because I hadn't been grocery shopping and I certainly didn't have any cold medicine on me (I'm not Shantonu or my dad so I don't carry my entire medicine chest with me every time I travel ;)).
Friday I stumbled my way to the pharmacy and bought 17 pounds worth of drugs (which was possibly the most I've spent on anything other than train tickets since I've been here). I stumbled to Tesco and bought cream of chicken soup and orange juice. In a stupor I went home and collapsed on my bed. I noticed right away that English-brand Dayquil and Nyquil are not anywhere near as strong as our stuff (whhhyyyyyyyy) but it helped a tiny bit. Saturday I expected to be on the mend, but that was not the case. If anything I felt even worse which convinced me that this was the flu and not a cold. I was nauseous, my body still felt like it had been hit by a Mack truck and I had to blow my nose approximately every seven minutes, so I cancelled my day trip to Malton, my coffee date with my godmother's friend, and my plans to see the concert my host dad was singing in.
I was annoyed about missing my Malton trip because I had already bought my ticket, for a grand total of 6 pounds 45 pence. Not a lot, but STILL, I hate wasting money and I was really annoyed. It also made me realize how much I'd packed into a few short days that I was cancelling. I've been here less than two months. Why am I so freaking busy? It's because since I've moved here I feel a compulsion to do and see as much as possible because it's only a year and that motivates me to want to go, go, go. But also going all the time makes me feel less lonely about being away from home. When I realized this (through the haze of my fever) I felt determined to let myself feel those feelings instead of pushing them away. Sitting with those feelings was part of the point of spending time abroad. I don't want to go home unchanged. I want to grow.
So instead of going, going, going, I laid in bed and moaned and laid on the floor and moaned - and finally took a Dayquil and with the reserve of energy it granted me I made lunch and a cup of tea. And laid around some more. Was it fun to miss all these activities? No, it was self-care. Did it bring me joy to spend my hard-earned money on medications and lose it on a train ticket? Nope, but it will (hopefully at some point in the not-so-distant future) guarantee me better health (mentally and physically).
Pleasure is a day-trip to Malton. Self-care is saying no, I'd collapse on the ground and die if I went, instead I'll use the little squidge of energy I have to make oatmeal and gargle with salt water. Self-care is a list of tasks/chores/necessities that happen every day and make life livable; pleasure makes life joyous and worth being livable. Both are necessary for overall health. They're not mutually exclusive to one another, but pleasure and self-care certainly aren't the same thing. And I'm really enjoying learning the difference here through getting to know British cultural attitudes towards health. You might even say that it's been a pleasurable experience.
Very cool Katie! Here's my question for you: is your journal entry self-care or pleasure?
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that I love to blur this line. Most of my favorite activities are pleasurable in the moment but also feel long-term like a good and healthy thing for me to do. I bet you've noticed that too even in specific activities like your yoga example: sometimes we feel blissed out and sometimes it's hard work, and oftentimes the two go hand-in-hand: like a shavasana which feels better, or more earned, after we've worked through some harder poses and exercise.
I think your points about American culture and the healthcare system are so spot on, and I totally understand your frustration with feeling like "self-care" is everywhere. I am definitely contributing to that problem. But I think the conversation about self-care is not meant to stress people out, or put more to-dos on an already busy plate. That definitely happens...but in my mind self-care does not have to be about us doing more things. It's at its core just a way of framing our thoughts to make sure that we're taking good care of ourselves, short and long term. To me that means that the pleasure experiences you describe above - a walk in the park, disconnecting under the clouds - really are self-care experiences too. Because your "self" is telling you that you want to slow down, to get away, to enjoy the moment, and you're listening to yourself.
My hope is that the conversation about self-care gives us the tools to better frame and think about issues of pleasure vs health, short term vs long term happiness, slowing down vs checking off more boxes. Even when our culture presents to us a misinterpretation of this idea: an instagram model in a beautiful place implying that if you practice self-care you might reach an end goal (which doesn't really exist) of being in that place too or being that person - proper self-care is what allows us to say to ourselves that hey, that person's self-care is not mine, and I don't need to be doing what that person is doing, and I know what does work for me.
So anyways, just know that I personally when I talk about this stuff never want to be putting anything on you or anybody else by adding more to a to-do list or encouraging reaching some sort of end-goal. My hope is that the conversations leave space for everyone to figure out what their own self-care is and what works for them.
Thanks for sharing,
-Ben
Hi Ben, I'm so glad you commented! I miss you :) This is a perfect way to reframe how I've been thinking about it coming from the PERFECT person to do this. I think I needed to be reminded of this by you, who knows well how to balance self-care and pleasure and knows me well too. This is a good reminder of how possible it is, despite society's edicts.
DeleteYou're right, the self-care and pleasure piece of walking in the park (for your example, go hand-in-hand... you reframe it in a way that sounds healthy. I just think oftentimes people are encouraged by society/social media (I don't have statistics or anything to back this up, just my sense of things) take the walk for the idea of self-care over the idea of pleasure and it's not actually beneficial overall to our health.
I think what you say about yoga is a good example of how you frame it in a healthy way... it's pleasurable but also provides self-care in the longer-term. I think what I see happening is that people start to look at the longer-term benefits first and feel pressured to make those happen, or at least more of a societal pressure to think of it like that - like in so many magazines it's all about practiving 5 minutes of yoga NOW for better health in your 80s! What a sad way to look at it. But I like the way you approach it which is much more relaxed and holistic.
I'd say Serenity Space does the opposite of contributing to the problem actually, because it teaches people healthy self-care (necessary) while making it pleasurable (also possible) and puts as little pressure on the person to be perfect in their self-care. At least that's what I've experienced from you :) I reject other notions of self-care that are more rigid and militaristic. And I totally agree with what you say about that other person's self-care not being my own - and that's part of learning how to self-care. And you do a good job of that. I hope you weren't offended by what I wrote because I think there are many entities (including Serenity Space) out there in the world (in the US, which is where I argued the issue lies) that promote pleasurable self-care and know the differences between the two - and when to combine them. In general our type-A society has an issue with that, but I like that recognize that oh, self-care is actually knowing when society (as you in your example, an instagram model) is wrong, I need something else to be taking care of myself.
This was all rambly and jumbly but you know what I mean... thank you for commenting on this and thinking about it and reading it! And thanks for doing what you do to help people lead their best self-care filled AND pleasurable lives. xoxo
oh, and to answer your question, I always think of writing in my journal/blogging as pleasure because otherwise it stresses me out, and when I focus on the pleasure side it's more genuine. But you're right, the self-care benefits are there as well... :)
Aw Katie what a kind reply :) Sometimes I definitely get in a little bubble in my world where it just starts feeling like "of course self-care=pleasure and short term good and long term good and good for others around too" which is not actually how it really works. It's helpful to be reminded of that, and of the way society puts it's messages on us in that regard.
DeleteWarm wishes and I hope you made it to the other side of your flu -Ben