Scunnered

Scunnered. (Definition and illustration below).

I’ve heard this word several times in the past few days. It’s one of those to be cherished Scottish words whose meaning is almost onomatopoetic – just saying it, with the right inflection, and the precise balance of vehemence and resignation, communicates its meaning.

demotivated

frustrated

disgusted

nauseated

sick of it

had enough

I’m outa here

The synonyms are like downard steps towards that point when scunneration (noun: a state when demotivation process nears completion) reaches crisis point and we are ready to walk away.

For one person, who works for a big organisation, the scunnered experience is caused by a relationship at work that’s just so draining, the colleague so negative that there seems neither willingness nor point in persevering with ideas, encouragements, suggestions, offers of help, support, all the positive things that come naturally. Someone else is scunnered because the most important relationship in their life is beginning to crumble, and with it the sense of life’s structure, purpose and direction as a shared project of faithful love and mutual accompaniment. The third person wants to buy their first home, nothing more than a wee flat, but even with a good salary, the prices are just getting further away month by month. Saving for a deposit is an exercise in proximate futility – you nearly always nearly have enough.

Scunneration is a problem then. Being scunnered isnae funny. It feels like emotional defeat. It describes what Jesus called ‘burdened and heavy laden’. To be scunnered is to detect that depleted feeling of having run out of one of the essential fuels for creative, purposeful living – ideas linked to self-confidence, linked in turn to a trustfulness that despite it all, life is good, precious and to be endured as well as enjoyed. It’s going a bit far to call being scunnered the equivalent to the dark night of the soul, but it does feel lonely, unaccompanied and emotionally arid.

At the same time it becomes an act of faith and a gift of grace to recover our balance, re-establish our equilibrium, adjust the persepctive, and recognise that perhaps after all the universe does not work for the purposes of our personal fulfilment. And I wonder if being scunnered can become a mild form of the prayer of lament – asking God ‘how long’ this particular scunneration will last, describing said scunnered experience in the clearest terms to God, but defiantly finding reasons still to praise and give thanks, because goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives…and thank God the divine patience never runs out, and God never gets scunnered with us!