Ever Changing Moods

TWENTY-ONE 27th February 2025

About a month ago I found myself musing out loud at a meeting with some activist friends that, notwithstanding the evident beginning of the end of the world, I felt that my mental health was pretty good. I put it down to having acquired (apparently) a habit of self-care. I seemed to be living moderately and mindfully, making sure to do plenty of things which make me feel good (which includes being in a relaxed setting with activist friends with whom I share feelings, perspectives and history) and avoiding things which make me feel bad (in particular, too much exposure to news media). I’m aware that it could be argued that anyone who claims to feel well in the current situation is plainly mad, but I stand by my statement: there is really not much point in pulling your hair out in anguish, provided that you are not denying reality and are doing what you reasonably can to try to make things better.

There’s the rub, I suppose, because almost as soon as I began to emerge from the cocoon-y space of mid-winter, bringing to a close a period of rest and recreation interspersed with talking about things which might be done, and actually engaging with doing some of them, I started feeling worse. Which is not good and not really what I expected. It’s not like I’ve been doing things which are very risky or very demanding: banging a drum outside the gates of a private airport while some of my friends turned away a succession of limousines carrying rich selfish wasters; sitting in a church hall for an afternoon networking with a large and diverse group of climate campaigners  from across the county; discussing productively with local politicians what might be done to counter the spread of hate and bile on local social media platforms; sitting in the road outside the Royal Courts of Justice with a thousand other people protesting the ludicrously severe prison sentences being served by some climate activists and facing down the absurd repeated threats of young police constables (I suspect they literally drew the short straw at the station briefing) that if we didn’t move they might apply for a Section 14 order and that if they got that then they might arrest us; banging a drum again last week while some of my friends occupied the inside lobby of offices belonging to some nasty corporate criminals and others decorated the outside with fake oil (rest assured they will be charged with criminal damage even though it washes off and that of course you can’t wash off the damage being  done so recklessly to people and the planet by their clients in the fossil fuel industry).

All of these things felt proportionate and worthwhile to me, likely to have at least some positive effects and no negative ones. Doing them didn’t cost me much and I was sure in each case that I was doing ‘the right thing’. And yet in every instance I felt I had to expend a great psychological (or moral?) effort in getting myself engaged. Basically, I experienced a strong desire not to do the things and I more or less had to force myself to do them. I remember similar experiences when I first got going with this stuff, but then it seemed to be to do with reticence about  breaking certain social taboos and/or fear of consequences. The taboos barely register these days, I know enough about legal ramifications to avoid those consequences if I want to, and the actual experience of being out on the street (or even in the church hall) is positive – as in it feels good – once I’m there. So what’s the extreme reluctance to get out there all about?

I find this difficult to think about, painful and challenging enough to prompt me to seek refuge in some distraction or mood-changing event – start planning a trip to someplace where it will be easier not to think about it, perhaps, wander out into the garden to top up the bird-feeder,  lose myself (literally, it sometimes feels) in a fruitless quest for good news in the pages of the online Guardian. It’s difficult to concentrate on the problem. Maybe it’s a bit related to why some people – well, most people, apparently – don’t think much at all about the state of the world – the climate crisis in particular – because it makes them feel impotent or useless or because it confronts them with choices which feel too difficult. Best to have a drink , book a holiday, watch TV. I don’t know. I really don’t know.

As far as I’ve got with it so far is realising that I feel considerably more anguish and rage about what our government is doing (or mostly not doing) than I do about what’s going on in the USA. Given the relative significance of actions taken (or not taken) in the massively influential USA with its 340 million avid consumers and the little old UK with its 68 million citizens of whom the international community takes increasingly less notice, this doesn’t make much sense, but it definitely feels true. At least the arrival into the White House of the ignorant barbarian and his evil philistine side-kicks has helped to square us all up to reality: it’s very bad, worse that you thought it might be, and it defies, surely, any proposition that we can just acquiesce and hope for the best. The need for urgent collective action by good people right now is inarguable. I suppose back in the distant days of a few weeks ago when I was telling my friends that I felt unexpectedly well, that conviction – the sense that now something on our side would have to shift – was supporting me.

But apparently a lot of the people that i had assumed to be on ‘our side’ don’t feel the same, in particular those of them whom we helped elect to be our government a bit more than six months ago and who – however bizarrely on account of our stupid electoral system – now have a massive parliamentary majority and can basically do what they like for the next four years. The fact that these people have real power to resist and to oppose what the lunatics across the pond are doing, and are choosing not to exercise it but, instead, to minimise, normalise, collude with and in some aspects actually mimic the posture and language of the nasty bastards over there (and their friends over here), I have found deeply disappointing and demoralising. To say it feels like like a massive betrayal really doesn’t cover it.

To be clear, I know of course that our government can’t stop much of what ‘they’ are doing, but they can speak out against it, they can take moral leadership and insist on following a very different path, they can try to shake us and our friends in other countries into a mood of creative opposition  and determined resistance. If wartime sprit was ever needed, it’s now, but there are no really powerful political voices challenging the forces of evil; there is just the drone of Starmer and Reeves wittering on about the potential for growth on a dead planet and the pathetic spectacle of Lammy and Mandelson saying that when they said before that the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes, they were mistaken or didn’t really mean it. All of them ready to scapegoat a few desperate people who have sought refuge and shelter in our once decent country by risking their lives in a small boat across the channel and to appease the wealthy, corrupt and criminally selfish people whose attitudes and behaviour are, ultimately, at the roots of the so-called refugee crisis (which of course is far from really being a crisis for us, although it is one for them).

“I can’t stand it!” is what I most frequently find my self thinking. When enough people think and say this is when we have the right conditions for rebellion, for proper uprising, because if easily transforms into “WE won’t stand FOR it”. But my most bitter experience of the past six years has been discovering that nowhere near enough people are aware enough or willing to take that position and that there seems to be nothing  that I or others like me can do about it. The times when that realisation strikes home are the times when my mood can spiral badly – more distressing than depressing, it feels like the only helpful things are calm self-care, the pursuit of some sort of harmless pleasure and, inevitably, the company of people who feel like I do, The fact that having their company often involves doing things (as above) which, because of their predictable failure to produce any significant results, leads to more anguish and despair, is what I think might fairly be called a paradox.

In my much younger days I was quite a big fan of Percy Byssche Shelley (at least when he was in one of his feisty and less sentimental moods ). In one of his poems he repeats the same mantra over and over” “Ye are many, they are few.” It’s about uprising, of course, and is meant as a call to action. Perhaps his words and those of others like him were helpful (although that’s complicated because the poem wasn’t published until 13 years after the event – the Peterloo Massacre – which inspired it) in encouraging a movement which did, ultimately bring about significant political change. I sometimes think of Paul Weller’s song, Ever Changing Moods as a modern (and less sentimental) equivalent. Six years ago I turned to it sometimes for inspiration, finding the idea that we might, as the song says “wake up one day and everyone feel moved.” Honestly I’ve more or less given up on that now, I have to for my own sanity. But the song is still helpfully resonant because it reminds me that there are many many people who feel like I do – ready to act but painfully aware that there aren’t enough of us – and that being in their company and connected by a sense of common purpose is healing and supportive in itself.

Wrestling with the paradoxes inherent in all of this is a bit wearing and sometimes it feels like it might be a relief to throw in the towel completely and opt for some sort of hedonistic retreat from reality while there’s still time. In fact I probably think that about twenty times a day. And then I think (and feel) something different. In this situation, it seems to me wise to conclude (at last until I’ve concluded something different) that the ever-changing-ness is a  symptom of the underlying problem and that the task, therefore, is to manage the moods – stay well, stay present, stay in active contact with people who mostly feel like you do (and avoid contact with the ones who don’t) and do the right things. 

I suppose it’s possible that once we’ve truly given up looking for the longed-for support of a mass of people, we’ll turn around to find that they are there. (Another song, Thank You by Alanis Morisettee; “The moment I let go of it was the moment I got more than I could handle”). But I’m not holding my breath.