Alive - by Dave Smith

The longing for inner peace is universal, and is another vital element
of feeling truly alive. I share that longing. How about you? The
problem is that, like a wet bar of soap, it can be quite elusive; no
sooner than we’ve begun to grasp a sense of tranquillity, it can all too
easily slip away. Many of us, I’m sure, can identify with U2’s iconic
refrain: ‘I still haven’t found what I’m looking for’.
A lack of inner peace is indeed widespread, including in relatively
prosperous societies. According to a 2018 survey from the Mental
Health Foundation: 74 per cent of UK adults had felt so stressed at
some point over the previous year that they felt overwhelmed or
unable to cope; 32 per cent of adults said they had experienced
suicidal feelings; and 16 per cent of adults said they had self-harmed
due to stress. 1 These statistics predated the Covid-19 pandemic,
during which many health professionals and cultural commentators
began to warn of a mental health pandemic coming on the back of the
medical health pandemic.
There appears, in some quarters, to have been a reduction in
anxiety levels since the pandemic, yet other factors such as a costof-living
crisis and ongoing pressures at work are increasingly
impacting on people’s sense of inner peace and wellbeing. So, for
example in the UK in 2023, a workplace health report indicated that
53 per cent of men and 65 per cent of women were experiencing
symptoms of anxiety and that 50 per cent of men and 60 per cent of
women were suffering from some form of depression. 2 Moreover,
young people seem to be being particularly impacted, with one in five
children and young people in England suffering from a probable
mental disorder in 2023. 3 Even if that’s not something that you
currently identify with, we all have seasons in our lives when we
experience external and internal pressures, which can cause varying