Five Foolproof Ways to Ignore the End of the World This Easter Week
A completely responsible guide to self-distraction during Holy Week, during the slow, inexorable march of geopolitical catastrophe.
Easter is, traditionally, a time for reflection, renewal, and consuming one’s own body weight in chocolate before 9am on a Sunday — two Sunday’s in a row. It is not, strictly speaking, a time for refreshing news feeds at 3am or computing the precise blast radius of a hypersonic missile. And yet here we are. The wars in Ukraine and Iran continue their tireless scheduling, utterly indifferent to the fact that most of us have taken the week off.
Fortunately, we decided to assemble this essential guide to not thinking about any of it.
1. Take a short break somewhere that isn’t being invaded
The good news is that such places still exist, if you are creative with your geography. The bad news is that you will need to rule out rather a lot of them. Eastern Europe is, for obvious reasons, a working holiday (with a bit of mine-dodging). The Middle East is similarly booked. The Indo-Pacific is tense. The South China Sea is very tense. The United States is, at time of press, doing something alarming to its own economy and is therefore not an appealing destination for a cross-country SUV treck. Even following today’s ceasefire agreement which, at this point, might or might not be fake news.
This narrows the field considerably. Specialists at our cartography desk, which is to say, someone with Google Maps and a dark sense of humour, recommend the following as offering at least a reasonable statistical probability of not being invaded before your return flight: Iceland (volcanoes, not geopolitics), the Azores (pleasantly irrelevant), and Liechtenstein (so small that any invader would be embarrassed to bother). Bhutan is said to measure happiness by national policy, which suggests either enlightenment or a very effective communications strategy. We cannot vouch for either.
Pack light. Don’t forget your documents. Tell no one exactly where you’ve gone.
2. Drown yourself in Easter eggs and alcohol, in that order
There is a long and distinguished tradition, stretching back through human history to its very earliest anxious civilisations, of consuming things until the bad thoughts stop. Easter has, with characteristic efficiency, provided two vehicles for this: chocolate and wine. One should not underestimate the sophistication of this pairing, even given the odd migraine.
The protocol is as follows. Begin with the ears of the largest chocolate rabbit you can find. This is not greed; this is triage. Progress methodically through the shell until you have achieved what nutritionists call a “cocoa fugue state” — a pleasant blankness in which international affairs recede to a low, distant hum, like a neighbour’s television through a thick wall. Follow with something generous and French. Repeat as necessary.
We do not recommend attempting to understand macroeconomics, the UN Security Council veto system, or your quarterly mortgage statement during this phase. These are tasks for a person who has had breakfast and slept. You, in this particular strategy, are neither of those things. You are, for this Easter week at least, committed to the project of feeling absolutely nothing about the Strait of Hormuz.
3. Go to the gym five times a day, just in case
Conscription, as a concept, has made a modest but unmistakable comeback in European political conversation. Several countries have already reinstated it. Others are running numbers. The actuarial question of whether you, personally, would be called up is one we cannot answer — that depends on your age, your fitness, your nationality, and frankly how the next few quarters go. What we can tell you is that it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.
Five gym sessions a day is, we acknowledge, ambitious. Most fitness professionals would describe it as “contraindicated.” Several would use stronger language. But consider the alternative: sitting on your sofa in a mild cocoa fugue state watching a Defence Secretary explain something about a “security umbrella,” and thinking: could I run for a bus? The answer, after five sessions, will at minimum be yes. Whether the bus is going somewhere useful (i.e. away from the call up or blast if you’re a bit late) is a separate question.
We suggest splitting your sessions sensibly: cardio at dawn (for the fleeing), weights at mid-morning (for the carrying of things), a light yoga session at noon (for the morale), a second cardio block in the afternoon (more fleeing, different direction), and a final session in the evening dedicated entirely to stress-testing whatever psychological optimism you have remaining. By Sunday you will either be combat-ready or hospitalised. Both, in their way, excuse you from checking the news.
4. Join LettsSafari and build a Yellowstone out of your backyard
Here at The Letts Journal, we are proud to be a part of the same stable as LettsSafari — our premium, sister publication with a rewilding membership programme for people who have a garden the size of a parking space and the ambitions of an American national park superintendent. For a very reasonable annual fee, you will no longer need to watch Yellowstone on Paramount+ to get your wild on. Just rip a new one in your back yard.
The beauty of LettsSafari, from a psychological standpoint, is the occupation it provides. Your crumbling patio becomes a geothermal basin. Your neighbour’s fence, viewed correctly, is the Wyoming state line. The pigeon that arrives every morning with the confidence of a bison is, for our purposes, a bison. You will spend Easter on your hands and knees in the soil, in light rain, earnestly relocating a population of woodlice and a few wildflower bulbs to a more desirable location, and you will not once think about satellite imagery of missile installations. This is the point. This is, in fact, the entire product.
Premium members receive a one way ticket to Greenland.
5. Binge every Taylor Sheridan series until Montana is more real than the news
Taylor Sheridan, screenwriter, director, horseman, and apparent owner of a substantial portion of the American West, has produced a body of work whose defining characteristic is the total irrelevance of international conflict. In Yellowstone, in 1883, in 1923, in Landman, and the latest offshoots, the problems are stark, local, and involve either a ranch dispute or someone being thrown off something tall. Nobody in a Taylor Sheridan production has ever expressed concern about a NATO article threshold. They are too busy with the cattle.
The prescription is simple: start binge watching during Easter week, finish when necessary. Settle deeply into the Montana of it all — the mountains, the long silences, the weathered men who communicate primarily through jaw tension and hat adjustment, the women who are considerably more competent than the situation requires. Allow the specific, immediate, beautifully-lit problems of fictional ranchers to replace the specific, immediate, very poorly-lit problems of the actual world. It works. The mountains are very convincing.
By the end of the holy week, you will have strong opinions about Dutton family land rights and no opinions at all about anything you probably shouldn’t have an opinion about anyway. You may also find yourself looking at your crumbling patio, now technically a LettsSafari reserve, and thinking it could use a barn. This is progress.
Happy Easter week. The world will still be there next week (we hope). There is genuinely nothing you can do about it before then — so eat the chocolate first.
The Letts Journal accepts no responsibility for the geopolitical situation, your resting heart rate, the state of your garden, or anything that occurs in Montana. LettsSafari memberships are subject to availability, optimism, and sufficient rainfall.
Keep up to date with The Letts Journal’s latest news stories and posts at our website and on twitter.