Lockdown lessons to love

‘Keep it simple, stupid” crops up often in wellbeing advice. It seems everyone who is largely content with their lot and/or making a good go of things, will tell you it’s often what you cut out of your life, not what you add to it, that puts you on the path to happiness.

In this week’s cover story, former Los Angeles wellness educator Lauren Roxburgh says her formula for a good life is built around a series of simple, relatively inexpensive activities: sleep, meditation, being out in nature, time with friends and family, cooking and gardening.

One benefit of slowing down is noticing things you might not have otherwise, good and bad. This was the case for some of the couples interviewed for this week’s story about postlockdown divorces. More time at home with less to do highlighted relationship issues that were more easily ignored when life was busier.

Take what you had as a couple before lockdown and double it, is how one counsellor explains it.

The long reach of lockdown, and the small, useful ways it continues to influence parts of life, is still surprising.

I still take my family for a “lockdown walk” if nerves are fraying at the weekend (the route is the same as it was in lockdown and we’d never taken family walks before), but the experience of the divorce couples shows me that re-creating some of the more subtle experiences of lockdown are just as valuable, if not more so.

So, aside from walks along a deserted country road, we’ve gone back to our family shopping list sessions.

During lockdown, the prospect of an outing for one of us was so exciting we’d gather around the dinner table to compile what was a pretty standard list of basic groceries, and write a weekly menu. This discussion seemed to unite us around daily kitchen chores, which were usually a source of bickering. The chat and the plan on the fridge is working its magic again.