Life can be grim sometimes.
In recent years, whilst wading through a few muddy valleys of my own, I've become increasingly interested in how we get by. There are reams of podcasts, columns and talks about happiness — about what makes us happy, and keeps us happy. But in many ways that is a circular conversation, often aiming at a state we rarely achieve simply by pursuing it.
Research shows many of the things we assume will make us happy — a promotion, a job, a house, a car — merely provide small or short-lived bumps until we return to our previous state of mind. (This is what gave rise to what is called hedonic treadmill theory, which has been revised in recent years.) Much of this stuff does not address real pain, trauma, or grief, but instead simply centres on a desire to feel good, or better.
One of the greatest myths is that by just being positive, or cheerful, we can somehow erase our problems.
I'm all for stubborn hope, but there's a reason much positivity is called toxic — it can encourage us to pretend and to deny, and places an additional burden of cheerfulness on those occupying some of the darker, airless pockets of life.
As Eleanor Roosevelt said, happiness is not a goal but a by-product of the way we live.
I think she's right.
How do we go on?
What I'm more interested in is the simpler question of: how do we go on? Walk through a single grey-stained day when there seems to be little reason to continue? Pulling on our boots, wading through the bog, closing our eyes to the headwinds, and somehow just making it from dawn to dusk?
I'm thinking here of the Japanese proverb nana korobi ya oki, which is translated as "seven times down, eight times up". How do we ensure we, and those around us, make that eighth time?
If you dig around for answers to this online, you'll find battalions of cliches running down hills towards you (duck!), as well as some interesting research, which tells us about the human need for community, for relationships, for purpose and nature.
What I've been particularly interested in exploring in recent years is the sustaining power of awe, commonly defined by social scientists as "being in the presence of something vast and mysterious that transcends your current understanding of the world".
Awe can be experienced in forests, oceans, music halls, art museums, football stadiums, protests, listening to street buskers and witnessing particularly kind, generous or courageous acts (which I call grace).
It makes us feel small, amazed, struck by mystery or beauty, and uplifted.
Research shows that the more we experience awe, the calmer, kinder, more altruistic and resilient we are.
As one study found, pursuing awe — as in paying more deliberate, acute attention to the world — can also serve as an antidote to narcissism. In this study of 60 adults, one group was sent out on regular, 15-minute "awe-walks" over an eight-week period, and another just walked about (the difference being the first group was intently focused on their surroundings, and how they might be changing over that time).
The first group was asked to take a selfie in every walk they did. In the first images, their faces loomed large. In the final photos, their faces occupied a smaller fraction of the frames, as they were trying to capture not just themselves, but what they were seeing behind them — a tree with flame-coloured leaves, a sky turning golden, a bird strutting or preening. It was, in short, training their brains to turn outwards.
Their smiles also widened over that time.
Reading this considerable research, and writing my own books about this phenomenon, changed my life and made me determined to deliberately hunt awe.
Survival is success
In truth, we often best learn resilience from seeing how others around us do it, and from the culture we marinate in.
When Arthur Kleinman, a professor of psychology at Harvard, began studying health in Taiwan in 1969, he says that many Chinese people told him that "the most important lesson in Chinese history and in their own lives was that people had to learn how to endure". He wrote in The Lancet in 2014 that after the turmoil of the 20th century in China — including the fall of the Qing dynasty, the wars (20 million Chinese died in World War II), radical Maoism and oppressive rule in Taiwan — this was hardly surprising.
But, he continued: "it also gave further credence to old folk wisdom among ordinary Chinese people who for millennia lived amid the enormous upheavals of historical and natural disasters, exposing them to deep poverty, famine, disease epidemics, floods, earthquakes, war, and revolution. Survival itself was viewed as the principal success in living that individuals and their families could aspire for … it became a core cultural wisdom."
Instead of perennially asking why people burn out, Kleinman says, we should be asking how they endure. And, he writes, "I mean by endure withstand, live through, put up with, and suffer. I do not mean the currently fashionable and superficially optimistic idea of 'resilience' as denoting a return to robust health and happiness. Those who have struggled in the darkness of their own pain or loss, or that of patients and loved ones, know that these experiences, even when left behind, leave traces that may be only remembered viscerally but shape their lives beyond."
Over the next few weeks and months, I'll be talking to people about how they get by, how they endure, in this column, called Staying Upright. If there's an interesting story in your community, or you know someone whose story is untold and whose strength has astonished you, please email me here.
I'll have a look at some of the research, too. I am regularly intrigued by how scientists try to measure the immeasurable — things like resilience, grace or awe — with markers like goosebumps, heart beats, or selfies. But I salute their attempts to try, and am frequently struck by their findings on how we can carve lives of meaning as we muddle along together.
Last week, Professor Kleinman told me: "Learning how to endure with joy and sadness, emotional courage and moral passion, irony and hope, is part of our quest for the art of living. The key is to be aware of the dangers but also the possibilities and as William James put it, not to be afraid of life."
March 24, 2024 at 01:00AM
https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiZmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDI0LTAzLTI0L3N0YXlpbmctdXByaWdodC1saWZlLWNhbi1iZS1oYXJkLWhvdy1kby1wZW9wbGUtZW5kdXJlLzEwMzYxNTUxNNIBKGh0dHBzOi8vYW1wLmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvYXJ0aWNsZS8xMDM2MTU1MTQ?oc=5
'Seven times down, eight times up': When life is hard, how do we go on? - ABC News
https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
No comments:
Post a Comment