Life Is About Just One Thing

So stop worrying about all the other crap

‘You know what the secret of life is? One thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean shit.’

‘That’s great, but what’s the one thing?’

‘That’s what you’ve gotta figure out.’

This exchange, from the 1991 move City Slickers, used to frustrate the shit out of me when I was younger. The bloke dishing out the cryptic advice is Curly, a gnarled old cowboy played by Jack Palance. The bloke he’s dishing it out to is Mitch, a city-dwelling ponce in the throes of a midlife crisis, played by Billy Crystal.

I was 16 when City Slickers came out and just beginning to dabble in life’s big questions.

Of course, I was being pretty half hearted about it - rather than try to work out the meaning of our existence via the great philosophers or religions I was just trying to pick up what I could from watching comedy westerns. And even then I wasn’t really prepared to make much of an effort. I really just wanted Curly to spell out, in layman’s terms, why we were here and what we we were supposed to be doing. I was like: “FUCK’S SAKE CURLY STOP BEING SO MYSTERIOUS AND JUST REVEAL THE KEY TO HAPPINESS YOU COWBOY BASTARD!”

But since then, having undergone my own midlife crisis and all sorts of other bewildering bullshit, I have tried a bit harder to work out what Curly was on about. I think he was right. You need to find a type of life that makes sense to you and just stick to it, appreciate it and try to live it the best you can. Life can be lived in a billion different ways. If you are lucky enough to be living in the privileged western world in the 21st century the choices can sometimes be overwhelming. We are surrounded by an array of designs for life - often force fed to us by mass marketing or just subtly promoted by our friends and neighbours.

If you are greedy you will try to live several different lives all at once.

You might be a weekend hooligan and a midweek intellectual. You might be a super-dad by day and a drunken fuck-up by night. You might profess to want the simple life but actively pursue the egotistical buzz of the limelight. It’s normal. All of these different types of life have their attraction. But ultimately you can only choose one. Trying to juggle them all at once leaves you exhausted, confused and riddled with the ever present sense that you might be bullshitting yourself and everyone around you.

Curly was a cowboy. He liked driving cattle, eating beans, lassooing stuff and all the other things cowboys do. So he devoted his life to cowboying and loved every minute of it. But Mitch was some sort of busy metropolitan executive who had achieved all the money and status he set out for but still found himself feeling a bit empty. He thought playing cowboys might help him discover a new approach to living that would miraculously scratch his itch. But he discovers that it takes more than riding around on a horse in a daft hat to absolve him of his existential malaise.

During lockdown I have become increasingly frustrated with the house I live in.

My family and I have spent so long inside these four walls that they have started to feel like they are closing in on us. I find myself going mental over little domestic inconveniences, like the way everything falls out of the Tupperware cupboard every time I open it. Why do we even have so much Tupperware? The bathroom is too small. The hallway is full of coats and shoes and bags. I can’t get the vacuum cleaner out from the cupboard under the stairs very easily. Often I lose my cool about these trivial matters and announce that we need to move house.

I spend hours trawling Right Move for large homes outside of the city with big gardens and plentiful storage space for Tupperware and what not. I fantasise about living in a home so spacious that the vacuum cleaner could have an entire room of its own. I go as far as to research local schools in towns I have barely even heard of and tell my wife exactly how we would travel to visit her mum if we were to move out.

But my wife says: ‘Shut up you twat, we’re not moving. We love it here, the kids don’t need the disruption and you’re just going stir crazy. Instead of spending hours staring at houses on your phone, try tidying the kitchen cupboards up a bit so you don’t end up going fucking bananas every time you open them.’

My wife is so wise. Like Curly, but prettier and more foul mouthed.

Also like Curly, she knows the secret of life is just one thing. I’m lucky enough to have found mine: a family I love and a home I was perfectly okay with before a killer virus locked us all inside it for 14 months.

I don’t need to change my reality, I just sometimes need to adjust my perspective on it. Looking at Rightmove is a distraction from the life I am living. It is a way of tricking my brain into believing it wants and needs more to be satisfied. But once I deleted the app from my phone a few weeks ago, tidied the cupboards, organised the hallway and made plans to decorate the bathroom, my psyche has settled back down again. I have reminded myself to be grateful for all the things I have and take pleasure in them every day. I try not to constantly look at the horizon or ask what’s next. I do my best to relish what’s going on right now.

It’s like a form of mindfulness I suppose - but without all the bullshit mantras and meditation. It’s just a matter of staying focussed on the things you love about the life you are already living. I saw a sweatshirt the other day emblazoned with a slogan that put it perfectly: “Remember when you wanted all the things you currently have?”

The Reset Podcast with Alastair Campbell

This week I chatted to author, former spin doctor and mental health campaigner Alastair Campbell. Despite his tough guy image, Alastair has always been very open about his struggles with depression. His new book Living Better is a must read for anyone interested in this stuff - whether you suffer from depression yourself or want to better understand the people around you who might. As always, Alastair was honest, candid and funny. I hope you enjoy listening.

Some services, links and phone numbers to help you through the tough times

https://www.samaritans.org/ Tel 116 123

@calm 0800 58 58 58

@YoungMindsUK 0800 018 2138

@ChairtySane 0300 304 7000

https://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/

https://cocaineanonymous.org.uk/

https://andysmanclub.co.uk/