Change . . . could do you good

How many ways can you take in a white wall? Inspect its tiny useless holes that once held frames, run your hands over its uneven jib, notice its manifold layers of Resene’s Sea Fog splashed over foundations made of oil and water. Note its shadows at 5pm; its blemishes bathed in pinks at sunrise.

While rain and wind hurled, the sun swelled, and rainbows magicked outside my window, I took an iconology of my new living room; inspecting it for clues of who had once been here, becoming familiar with the idiosyncrasies of an old building. Eventually, after 1000 days, perhaps kicked along by frequent lockings-in of the pandemic variety, by Monday this week I wanted to change my world. I decided to look the other way.

I started by moving the couch, my office, into the centre of the room. I took my favourite armchairs, the faux blue velvet faded from the sun, and the retro orange sheathed in pink and gold, and swivelled them one by one. I introduced my long-suffering plants to the world-watching window. I huffed and puffed my bookcase 90 degrees until it sat across from the TV. I unstacked and restacked books. I moved dust on, out of crevices, along with detritus – an old charger, pens, hair-ties – that had been obscured, forgotten. I purged the useless, and put the keepables in their rightful places.

Now, my couch invites me to look at not white-grey walls, but out the window and over the water, to the real sea fog. I sit cross-legged and see my plants seeing the neighbourhood; imagine my books taunting the television. At night before I turn the lights off I peek around

Within a chaotic, deadly, pandemic landscape, there is joy to be found among the tedium, and it’s in the infinitesimal.

the corner and see my lounge taking in the view. My living room is brand new . . . feels good.

There is a tweet travelling around millennial internet communities that became so popular it was enshrined in a meme. To paraphrase it went something like, ‘remember rearranging your room as a child? And showing it off to your parents? And they said lovely approving things like ‘very nice’, and you were all, ‘hell yes, new year, new me’. The sentiment was liked and shared by more than half-a-million people.

‘‘This is still my coping mechanism,’’ one replied. ‘‘New room. New mindset.’’

What is it about a freshly clean room? The tweet returned me to the throes of reorganising my lair in teen-hood, diligently consulting Dolly or Girlfriend magazine; whichever one had the feng shui special that month. Sometimes the makeover would extend to painting, but even simply clearing out my closet and flipping my bed around (but never towards the door, the magazines warned, to avoid the coffin position) opened a world full of possibilities. Everything had a thoughtfully chosen position in my inner world, and with it a shiny new appeal. I imagined myself, then and now, as a productive person in a welcoming and warm part of the world.

As an adult this feeling of wanting to make over my living spaces is often felt strongest at the beginning of spring, and on New Year’s Eve. Theories suggest this is because we have more energy for stock-taking in warmer months, and are thus more likely to clean our homes. But there are parallels seen in religion and different cultures. In south-east Asian countries mid-April brings with it Songkran, a water purification festival whereby people clean their homes from top to bottom. The Japanese clean their homes in December, in what’s known as osouji, to welcome the gods of the new year.

Even without a feng shui-approved remodel, change in and of itself felt good. Since the 1800s poems and proverbs have advised that all work and no play makes people boring, that a change of toil is as good as fun, and more recently, a change is as good as a holiday. They all tell us the same thing, more or less. I think it might just be, make a small tweak to your dull world and reap the benefits.

Psychologist Sarb Johal says in a lockdown context, or when life is particularly monotonous, a tiny dose of change can have a big impact.

‘‘It’s interesting – even just taking a different path to the supermarket, or leaving the house and turning left instead of right, starts to make an impact, boosting those positive emotions,’’ he says. ‘‘[Particularly when] we’re doing things that feel like a hard grind, like exams . . .

‘‘Novelty is very stimulating for people, and people who seek out new experiences tend to have happier, healthier lives.’’

With Covid circling the globe, and people staying inside more than ever, for how long will shifting furniture suffice? Or will I continue to rely on other life adaptations, that until this week I also didn’t realise I found thrilling? They include: buying a different kind of sliced bread, hanging the sheets out on the line in the sun instead of on the indoor clothes rack, trying a new bodywash, taking a different route home, experimenting with a new recipe, putting a different duvet on the bed, starting the first page of a new book, and, I’m ashamed to say, visiting a different supermarket than usual.

But I think it works in reverse, too. In memoirs of people with interesting lives, or those who have lives and can find an interesting way to tell them, I always find the mundane the most revealing, the most exciting. When Jon Krakauer was hanging off Mount Everest in Into Thin Air, the ability to have tea and make phone calls subsumes the reader into the simple pleasures of living, never mind the snow-capped monolith in the background.

That may be why when I think of my exciting travels abroad I mostly remember things like the devastating freshness of a smoked salmon and creme fraiche baguette outside the Louvre, instead of pretty much anything inside it (aside from the underwhelm of the Mona Lisa). The struggle of dragging a 20kg suitcase across cobblestones in Croatia, instead of the warmth of the Adriatic.

That there can be, and frequently is, ordinary among the extraordinary, suggests the possibility to me that there is wonder everywhere; that within an ordered and pleasing world, anything could happen. And likewise within a chaotic, deadly, pandemic landscape, there is joy to be found among the tedium, and it’s in the infinitesimal.

That is the secret, I think, as I stare out across my plants and into the water.