fear of change

April 23, 2023

How Much Do You Think You Will Change in Ten Years?

Ask a 28-year-old if he is mature; he will likely say yes. At a certain point in life, we believe we have learned most of the essential lessons. One can imagine our personalities are formed, and our values are secure. They will endure.

Nope.

Three psychologists published an important paper (describing six experimental studies employing psychological tests) focusing on our illusions regarding the degree to which time will reshape us.

For example, they asked 28-year-olds how much they believed they would change in the next ten years. In contrast, they asked a group aged 38 how much they had changed in the last decade. The groups were similar but for their ages.

When they compared the two, the first bunch predicted they would alter a modest amount. However, the older segment recognized they’d shifted more than expected in the identical period.

The experimenters looked at individuals between 18 and 68, obtaining the same results. The study included over 19,000 subjects.

Quidbach, Gilbert, and Wilson claimed this is an illusion to which humanity is subject. Indeed, they called their paper “The End of History Illusion.” We think of ourselves as fixed in place as we are, a more or less permanent version of the one who goes by our name. The big transformations in our life exist as a remembered past, so we think.

What does this tell us?

The strawberry ice cream you love today might be cast aside down the road.

More seriously, we can tap memory to capture the extent of previous modifications to our nature but ignore or forget such knowledge when considering the rest of the journey.

Given that the findings point to underestimating the metamorphosis over the horizon, they may result from not wishing to consider what the unknowable tomorrow might bring.

Fear of change applies to a segment of life experience for many of us.

Consider this as well. If you make unexpected changes in values, preferences, or personality, the same might be true of friends, lovers, or others. Such an idea anticipates a precarious existence without a clear path to make oneself ready for it.

If one expects the coming incarnation of each of us to be like the present (except for minor personal shifts), our plans shall be off the mark. But how can we do better when we lack a crystal ball?

Every human soul can try to control his behavior, education, and decisions for now, but not for the person he will become. The bucket list items of today need to be fulfilled while they still matter.

By the time you retire, you could be someone whose interests and tastes have traded places with those of the new guy, whoever he is.

Even so, humans are adaptable. They adjust to the prevailing conditions and move toward a set point — a built-in grade of life satisfaction. At a practical level, life’s ups diminish after their moment of buoyancy, while the downs hit the floor, and we usually bounce back to some approximation of where we started.

Though we underestimate the manner and scope of our change, we are created to last through whatever those differences amount to.

Since the image in the mirror, inside and out, won’t be the same for long, perhaps the best advice is this:

We are all in transit. Use the time to improve, repair the world, enjoy the moment, and make the most of it.

———-

The authors of the paper mentioned in this essay were Jordi Quoidbach, Daniel T. Gilbert, and Timothy D. Wilson. It was published in the January 4, 2013 edition of Science, Volume 339, Issue 6115.

Both of the above images are the work of Laura Hedien, with her kind permission: Laura Hedien Official Website. The first is the Chicago River, from the end of December 2022. The second is an Antarctic Sunset, photographed in November 2022.

April 4, 2021

Does Love Die of Boredom? Some Unexpected Advice

As the stream of time moves us on, most of us hope to find a comfortable way to manage. Few beg for more of the turbulence of early years, a period fraught with insecurity and internal confusion. “Who am I — who do I want to be?” — is a question we’d rather not ask. Psychological and physical ease is the goal.

Yet, do we risk a life of deadening routine? Do we hold too fast to one version of our identity past the point our partner finds us dull? Even the beautiful and smart can be unlucky in love.

Who might we consult to make ourselves forever interesting to the one we care for?

How about someone who ended one of his most famous works with the words, “You must change your life.”

Rainer Maria Rilke died at 51 in 1926. In his half-century, he gained an unconventional perspective on love and keeping it fresh. He thirsted for experiences, wishing to absorb the world with new eyes as if he were seeing his surroundings — human and natural — for the first time.

The poet often praises those who make perception into an activity, not the automatic, passive accumulation of sights, sounds, and smells entering our awareness without effort. He wants it to be alive, not rendered invisible by his failure to recognize more than customary appearances.

In The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, insightful observation requires intention: an attempt to make the familiar unfamiliar, nor turn from what troubles us when we look and listen closely.

Here is an example from the title character Brigge:

There are many people, but even more faces, since everyone has several. There are people who wear a face for years, and of course it wears away, gets dirty, cracks in the creases, stretches like gloves you’ve worn whilst traveling.

Rilke’s words push us to take a new look at the next face we behold. He implies more exists behind faces than we thought. The portrayal of Brigge discloses a young man attentive to subtlety and nuance, the qualities arrayed before him available to his sight: the sensory world we find unremarkable without the effort to inspect it.

Now imagine yourself attached to someone like Rilke, woman or man, who transforms part of the experiences you take for granted.

At age 27, Rilke received a letter from a 19-year-old, with whom he continued a prolonged but occasional correspondence. The younger man, a military student named Franz Kappus, sought advice on his own literary efforts.

The compilation of Rainer Maria’s side of the exchange appears in his Letters to a Young Poet.

In the eighth of his 10 communications, dated August 12, 1904, Rilke addresses the reasons he believed sweethearts became boring.

For it is not only indolence that causes human relationships to be repeated from case to case with such unspeakable monotony and boredom; it is timidity before any new, inconceivable experience, which we don’t think we can deal with.

Note, Rilke doesn’t say one of the lovers is boring. He says tedium grows out of hesitation to take on new inward and outward adventures. He continues:

But only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn’t exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.

For if we imagine this being of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it is obvious that most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and forth. In this way they have a certain security.

The above passage suggests courage is the inoculation preventing the death of intimacy. Moreover, Rilke believes it will foster not only closeness but also Kappus’s self-discovery. In eaves-dropping on a century-old private exchange, we are allowed to ask if we too remain in “a corner of (our) room” out of a desire for security and safety.

The older man’s message continues to explore this idea:

And yet how much more human is the dangerous insecurity that drives those prisoners in Poe’s stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their cells.

We, however, are not prisoners.

Later, both Kappus and we are told why we ought to flee our self-imposed confinement and embrace the wider world.

If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them.

And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience.

How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses.

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

The dragons might also be thought of as personal shortcomings hidden by the masks we wear — the truth we hide from others and ourselves. The writer suggests we take the role of a sculptor of our individual humanity, forever adapting, shaping, and experimenting with an identity which new circumstances, aging, and personal history demand we change.

Rilke asks us to begin self-examination, to stand erect and naked before the sunlit mirror, and declare, “This is who I am.” The static life, he might tell us, is a missed opportunity. He applauds those who wish to know more — endlessly.

The whole of humanity will never take Rilke’s advice. Not everyone accepts life’s unexpressed invitation to discover who they are and create who they strive to be. I suspect the man is speaking of rare creatures among us.

Perhaps they would be the metaphorical tightrope walkers and fire-eaters, and those to whom love or justice or freedom are worth everything they possess — everything they must endure for the chance to achieve them.

In our challenging mortal world, Rilke recommends we mull over unnecessary boundaries and barricades built for self-protection, some of which cost us the fulfillment we say we want.

Since the clock on our duration keeps its steady pace toward the ends of things, we do well to live with a tempered urgency to be more, notice more, and do more.

And if we are lucky and his suggestions are correct, win and maintain a lasting love.

====================

The quotations from Letters to a Young Poet are a part of one long paragraph. I’ve broken the sentences up to better clarify your understanding and my commentary.

The first painting is August Macke’s 1914 Tightrope Walker. The second is Tightrope Walkers,1944, by Remedios Varo. Finally comes Giorgio de Chirico’s 1926 The Two Masks. All of these come from Wikiart.org/

January 17, 2021

The Solitary Task of the Therapy Client

If life is like reading a book, many of us come to therapy when the next page stops us. The white paper rises up and forbids progress.

For the moment, his will triumphs over ours. Forward motion feels beyond our strength.

We set the text aside, but it finds us and opens to the unchanged page, always to this page.

Our nemesis, for so we think of the volume in this way, shows up close by our fear of intimacy or self-assertion. The adversary lurks around the corner whenever we run from a challenge. In the bedroom, the tormentor waits for gloom to inhabit sleep.

The strange companion watches as we make our usual mistakes.

He is the silent manuscript resting on the empty barstool as we try to drink away our woes. You find him sitting beside the distraction of sex with someone we met ten minutes ago.

Infinite patience and stubbornness rank high in his list of qualities. He hangs around, offering us the subtle summons to advance the story.

He knows all the written words that came before. Nor does he tire of watching us repeat them in forms always a bit different, always the same.

It is the tale of our life, the journey so far.

Until we recognize the book as our past path, he will offer us his reminders. Perhaps, if the reader confronts whatever a new chapter might hold, the Monster shall begin to smile.

Wisdom tells him this part of the notebook remains unwritten.

Will the reader acknowledge this? Will he face the creature and perceive that the behemoth is a friend?

Only then might one look back at the title and see “The Autobiography of ___________.” The blank spot awaits a name. The virgin space of parchment offers itself to us.

Shall we take ownership of the only life we have? I mean the unwritten parts.

How many empty pages await, filled with possibility?

Pick up the pen.

Make haste.

————

The top image is a 1915 self-portrait of Helene Schjerfbeck from the Finnish National Gallery. The second self-portrait is Egon Schiele’s work taken from the Leopold Museum of Vienna, thanks to Professor Mortel. Both were sourced from Wikimedia.org/

February 21, 2016

Why Loved Ones Refuse Therapy and What to Do About It

man-watch

You’ve tried — with your friend, your spouse, your adult child. You made the case for counseling. Some hem, some haw, some say they will, but don’t. Others just refuse.

Why?

A few reasons to consider and what you might do about it:

  • Stranger danger. Suspicion of strangers is deeply rooted in the human race, derived from our primitive beginnings and ever-present con-artists. Your friend’s personal experience of betrayal may be a key factor.
  • Saving face. Much in life depends on reputation. How many of our parents admonished us to hide the family secrets and “be sure you don’t tell the neighbors!” Men, in particular, want to project strength, the better to succeed in the world of work and win a desirable spouse.
  • The doctor doesn’t care. He is only in it for the money and measures his patients’ value by the size of their bankroll. Should counselors then give treatment away and make their living after hours by standing on street corners with hat in hand?
  • I’m afraid my employer will find out. I can’t risk it. If you use insurance, the insurer will know your diagnosis, as will every such company in the linked system. They are not supposed to reveal anything to your employer. However, if you work for someone with few employees and his premiums go up the next year … ?
  • Therapy is for the weak, a crutch for the spineless. A therapist argues instead that facing your demons and working to change are signs of strength, not evidence of frailty: an indication of courage, not its absence.
  • I don’t believe in the value of looking back. Sometimes therapy doesn’t require it, but a historical evaluation can remove the bolder from your backpack and allow you to move ahead with pace. On the other hand, baseball’s Satchel Paige said, “Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you!”
  • Emotional pain. Whatever reasons are given, the prospective client can be unconsciously timorous at opening painful issues — digging up a grave bursting with undead horrors of the heart and memory.
  • I’m a logical person, not into feelings. I can solve this logically. Such statements are uttered most often by those who aren’t as logical as they think.
  • A real man does things, he doesn’t talk about them. But what if he doesn’t know what to do after trying everything?
  • Fear of change. Most of us find discomfort in new challenges, in or out of treatment. Yet change can’t be avoided unless you want to wear the same clothes in the same size and color the rest of your life; and continue to travel to the same job site even after your employer bars the door.
  • Fear of the mystery. The counseling office is a bit like the inner sanctum of a haunted house — a place of strange rites and secrets, incense and shadow play, frequented by the ghost of Sigmund Freud. The person who wants control will find few guideposts. Will a wizard cast a magic spell on him?
  • Fear of medication or hospitalization. Though you can’t be forced to take meds as a rule, some are terrified they might hear the doctor recommend it — or worse, a hospital stay.

What’s to be done? I received calls from spouses who wanted to make an appointment for their mate. This is rarely useful. If the individual lacks the courage or motivation to seek treatment himself, the likelihood of his appearance at the appointment is a coin flip at best.

Begging and pleading have their limits, too. The more you push, the more therapy becomes your agenda, not the person you care about. You own it, he doesn’t want to buy it. The more you pester or threaten, the faster he runs. If he does attend a session, his motive is to placate you, not heal himself.

Sometimes it helps to enlist the persuasive talents of one who is respected by the prospective patient: a clergyman, best friend, or close relative. The danger here, however, is an unauthorized revelation to a third-party interpreted as a breach of trust. A similar risk occurs when you plan an “intervention:” getting several friends and family members together to encourage and explain their concern to the doubtful potential client. This technique is more often used with alcohol and drug abuse problems, and is easier to rationalize when the person’s life is out of control and in danger.

I am not speaking here of people who are at risk of harming themselves or others. Thus, legal remedies to force the issue are not available. If your steady expression of loving concern cannot turn the tide, waiting might be the only alternative. The accumulation of pain perhaps will do what you can’t.

You are left in a difficult situation: straining your patience when everything in you wants to scream.

512px-03_Georg_Favbe_Jacot_von_1870

Most of us spend a good part of our lives wishing others were different: more loving, kinder, attentive to us in a way rarely offered; with an intensity and compassion that finally permits the auditor to “get us.” We want the love of this one, the respect of that one, and wish another would take our words to heart. We think and plot about attracting the dark stranger, selling the human product (ourselves), and winning the vote of the crowd.

The good news here is the presence of one person we tend to ignore. While we work on others to change, he remains in the shadows. We don’t need to run after him, persuade him, make an appointment to meet six weeks in advance, and cause his face to turn in our direction. His visage greets us in the mirror every morning.

When others resist our efforts to influence them we are left to change what we can about ourselves — what we may and what we must: our attitude, emotions, and reactions to the one who refuses treatment — and to the rest of life as well.  The transformation begins whenever we want. The process of self-modification can persist as long as we live. Unlike changing the loved one, however, the necessary alterations are in our hands.

The most important opportunities in life sometimes have been there all along. We wait for the other to wake up while what is changeable in ourselves awaits its own awakening. Imagine standing at a crossroads: one path leads to a darkling state of perpetual hope or desperate preoccupation with a person you can’t control. You pass the time alternately gnashing your teeth or imagining what life might be like if only he changes. The other road directs you to a house of natural light and mirrors revealing all sides of the one human you do control. This workshop evokes the hard work of the master sculptor in everyone, the painstaking job of reshaping our basic stuff.

Become your own work of art.

050613102055--Bristol RWA gallery starting point for Festival of Stone Sculpture Trail

—

The second image is a Ladies Watch Case photographed by Zeigerpaar and sourced from Wikimedia Commons. The bottom photo comes from the Bristol RA Gallery Festival of Stone Sculpture.

 

December 25, 2011

The Difficulty of Facing Reality: When Hope is the Problem and Not the Solution

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We are in the season of hope, but in the midst of despair.

“Lions and tigers and bears! Oh my!”

The holidays tend to make one almost embarrassed to be hopeless; and hopelessness is described as something to be avoided in any season.

But sometimes, having hope is a problem — the problem — and giving up hope, facing reality, leads to possibilities.

All of us have had the experience of hoping for a positive outcome or event that wasn’t realized. We hoped to win the game, the job, or the romantic partner only to come up short. “Wait until next year” is the rallying cry of Cubs fans and human beings everywhere in the face of disappointment.

As the saying goes, “hope springs eternal.”

But sometimes hope is destructive. If you are in a terrible job with a sadistic boss, hoping for him to change is likely to keep you paralyzed, rather than triggering action to find a new place of employment or a new career.

If you are married to an alcoholic, abusive spouse, believing his apologies and promises to do better will keep you in the center of his bulls-eye, a target within easy reach.

Has your parent spent your whole life ignoring what you do well and trashing you over what you do not? Trying to win his praise might be a waste of your time, as hopeless as booking a trip to Mars for your next vacation.

In a rocky relationship? Some people hold on to the fantasy that if they can find just the right words and behave in just the right way, they will succeed in pleasing their spouse into being more loving. Others think having a child will make the marriage better, and live in that hope.

And then there are those who have been rejected by a lover, but continue to carry the torch of love into the dark night of the soul long after the loved-one has moved on.

I cannot say that hope is futile in each and every example I’ve given.

But it is often something of a fool’s paradise; nothing more than a castle in the air.

https://i0.wp.com/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/Job%27s_Despair_Butts_set.jpg/500px-Job%27s_Despair_Butts_set.jpg

What I’m talking about here is a passive, inactive, timid hope that waits too long by the phone for the suitor to call. Not an active but reasonable hope that searches and schemes; defiantly claws its way forward and claims what it wants.

Beyond a certain point, passive hope anesthetizes you when you need the pain to motivate action; and need it to force yourself into the risks required to get what you want. As such, hope in these situations serves as an excuse for inaction.

All the while, life passes you by.

Thus, hope can keep you in a dead-end spot — the pipe-dream of an imagined future, while enduring a terrible present. I wouldn’t say that an imagined future would be a bad place to be if there were no ways to change the present. But, if you are ignoring things you can do to make your life better, than a servile hope is little more than a fairy tale.

Are you hostage to hope or perhaps, do you hope for the wrong things?

Such as?

A short list:

  • A life without problems.
  • Winning the lottery.
  • A new luxury car or great wealth.

Why not hope for these and similar things? Because there are no lives without some problems, lottery winners often report a less wonderful life than they expected; and treasurable objects beyond the basic necessities don’t seem to generate much lasting satisfaction. They are like the rapidly dissipating “new car smell” that most find so attractive and so temporary.

The overriding point here is that hope not only battles with despair, but also with acceptance of reality — acceptance of the terms life allows, followed by a commitment to change what it is in your power to control, instead of simply “hoping for the best.”

Such acceptance does not come easily. Admitting defeat is almost always difficult and painful. Grieving is thought by some to be unmanly and by others unnecessary or a hindrance to progress. But it has a cleansing function, one that allows most wounds to heal.

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How do you know whether you are holding on to too much hope? One way is to look at how you deal with defeat and whether you can bounce back and embrace change. If too many situations find you stuck, waiting and wishing for something outside of yourself to intervene — a kind of deus ex machina — then you are vulnerable to the immobilizing influence that hope can have. If you’ve been at that dead-end job for years or in an equally dead relationship for an equally long time, it might be worth considering what you are waiting for and why you have not acted.

Do you fear that change could bring something worse?

Sometimes it can, but not all gambles are foolhardy.

Do you live in a future your friends think to be unimaginable while the present slips away?

In Dante’s Divine Comedy, we are told that the entrance to hell is inscribed with these words:

“ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE“

Ironically, it is just that directive that might be the way to a new and better life.

Heaven can wait.

Stop hoping for its quick arrival unless you have explored everything else that is possible.

Try — try hard — to create a heaven on earth.

In that possibility there just might be something worth hoping for.

—

The sculpture at the top is called Allegory of Hope, a 1776 work housed in the Catholic parish church St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf am Lech in Bavaria, Germany, photograph by GFreihalter. The second image is Job’s Despair by William Blake, from 1805. Finally, a 19th century painting by Taiso Yoshitoshi after the poem One Hundred Aspects of the Moon by Lady Ariko-no-Naishi. All are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

January 18, 2011

September Song

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I was talking to an unmarried friend recently, not a young man, who presented me with a dilemma that was troubling him. It seemed that an attractive and intelligent woman, much younger than he, was showing an interest in him.

Friendship? Romance? Business advantage or advice?

All yet to be determined.

But he wondered whether to pursue the relationship, particularly if it might become romantic, sexual.

Now my friend is extremely bright, a thinker all his life. Indeed, this is how he makes his living — thinking, evaluating, considering, pondering, weighing, judging; and then conveying the result of those calculations to others, who pay him well for his service.

He sees lots of potential problems, although he doesn’t know the woman well at all — yet. Might she be interested in him only for his ability to assist her professionally? Wouldn’t others looks askance at the two of them together, a woman of 30 and a man of 55?

Or could one of the things that now attracts her to him — his capacity as a mentor or guide, someone who has much more experience of some very interesting things — eventually be seen as a problem when she tires of the “student” role and begins to resent the “teacher?” Wouldn’t the generation gap, the memories and formative influences that they don’t have in common, eventually separate them?

Now all these, and more, are not unreasonable thoughts. The problems that he sees could very well occur.

But other men might see it differently. They would welcome the attention of a young and attractive female, the energy, the sexual tension, the admiration, the possibility of what still might be. Indeed, some men of any age could well believe that they’d won some sort of dating lottery in just this situation.

But then, my friend lives in his head a lot, a thinker, as I said. And thinkers think. Not because it always works, not because they have to, but because it is almost as natural and automatic as breathing. Simply because they’ve always done it.

Most of us, past a certain age, just keep doing what we’ve done and getting what we’ve got. Not that what we’ve got has always been that great, but the unknown future seems fraught with danger and only the safety of the well-trod path appears to offer any security. Better the mediocre “known” than the dangerous, but perhaps promising “unknown.”

And so, the man who has always worn only Brooks Brothers suits for fear of others criticizing his wardrobe choices will still wear those suits; and the adult who had little money while growing up will continue to under-tip the waiter and sit in the “cheap seats” in the theater despite the fact that he has a million dollars in the bank and a secure pension on top of it; and the orchestra musician too long beyond his prime will play the violin still, not because he so loves it, but because he doesn’t know what he’d do with his time if he quit the thing to which he has devoted his entire life.

One is trapped by social expectations and insecurity, another held tight by the dead hand of the past, a third lacking the imagination or courage to reinvent himself. All are like sail boats becalmed, in a still-state of living without life.

But the days grow short as you reach September

When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame

One hasn’t got time for the waiting game

My advice to my friend? See what happens. You aren’t young any more. Life is short. Who knows what it may yet have in store?

Before long spring will be in the air again. Even if it is not the spring of your youth, the earth’s spring might yet enliven you.

And listen to Walter Huston’s recording of September Song, music by Kurt Weill, words by Maxwell Anderson.

His rendition remains the best ever, even if barely sung, because of a sensibility that knew very well that of which he sang — the September of life and the hope of romance to heal the lonely heart.

—

The photo above is a Picture of Pin Oak leaves turning color c/o: Rmccrea, Wikimedia Commons.

The quotation is from September Song.

November 19, 2010

Old But Useful Thoughts: a Stoic Guide to Life

The Stoic philosophers have gotten a bad rap. I know, this problem isn’t exactly as pressing as the unemployment rate, the deficit, and our military involvement in the Middle East.

I therefore beg your indulgence and hope you will read further. It just might influence how you think about life. The BP oil contamination can wait — and you can’t do anything about it anyway —  so don’t let it get the best of you, a point the Stoics would surely make.

The “bad rap” is largely the result of how we understand the word “stoic.” We define that word to refer to someone who is indifferent to emotion, deadened to pain, hardened and impassive; someone who has “killed” his feelings. But this is not what Zeno, a third century B.C. Greek philosopher had in mind when he founded his school of philosophy.

Rather, the Stoics saw that emotion could become extreme and destructive. They therefore looked to find some balance between head and heart, with the passions held in check.

More importantly, however, Stoics turned their attention to the importance of a person’s own behavior and inner life, seeking to help the individual find equanimity and satisfaction in life (in part) by not overvaluing the inessential, external things and events that crowd in on him. According to their line of reasoning, it is important to distinguish what is virtuous and important that is controllable from what is trivial and outside of one’s control. Then, by giving a paramount position to clarity of thought and self-reflection, one may achieve freedom from the excesses of anger, self-pity, jealousy, suffering, and anguish, as well as an overall sense that life hasn’t “played fair” with us.

Professor Luke Timothy Johnson has said the following about the contrast between the world view of a man like Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic “philosopher/king” of second century Rome, and our own way of thinking about “the good life:”

Marcus Aurelius was obsessed by the transitory character of all existent things. We (by contrast) take our institutions for granted. We think that life is long. We assume that we should be healthy. Marcus Aurelius spurned pleasure and sought duty. We are driven by the notions of feeling good, and the pursuit of happiness is often identified with the pursuit of pleasure. Marcus Aurelius identified freedom as a call to virtue and duty, whereas in present day America, we often think of freedom as the most radical form of individualism and doing what we like.

The Stoics would say that most of us are not free. Rather, we are slaves to making money, accumulating objects, and creating or defending a reputation. For them, “living well” didn’t mean living in the lap of luxury, but living simply, concerned with improving oneself and one’s conduct toward other men.

For these philosophers and like-minded people of today, the ups and downs of life, the illnesses, the job frustrations and relationships disappointments, and the calumnies of the jealous, not to mention death itself, are all seen as simply “in the nature of things.” Acceptance of what is “natural” and what is a normal part of the human condition is key to a Stoic’s way of taking the world as it is, not as one might wish it to be. If a Stoic is approached by someone who has suffered a reversal of fortune and is asking “Why me?” he would likely answer, “Why not you.” (Or anyone else, for that matter).

Stoics such as Seneca and Epictetus believed that by leading a virtuous life one could achieve happiness, regardless of what external misfortunes (including death) happened. This is surely farther than most of us would go, but that way of thinking does tend to normalize and minimize certain events that we consider to be “tragic.”

Those of us who live in Western Civilization run the risk of thinking that our happiness depends on how well our kids do in school (and whether they attend the “right” school), our next promotion or job title, the approval of our “betters,” making a certain amount of money or achieving an advanced social rank, and a gorgeous house in a fine neighborhood. The Stoics would say we are much too concerned with external things (rather than focusing on trying to lead a virtuous life). And, interestingly enough, contemporary psychological research tends to support the Stoics: those with tons of money are only somewhat more satisfied with life than those with just enough for the basic necessities.  Put another way, it is the striving for things outside of ourselves, the struggle to defeat or avoid the inevitable disappointments of life, that robs one of peace of mind.

In effect, the Stoics are saying that we pay too much attention to external things of little “real” value, and that in so doing we create our unhappiness, having chosen beliefs which lead us into the pain we seek to avoid.

Take an example. A parent wants his child to obtain a graduate school level education from a “good” school. The child, however, may not be of an academic bent, and doesn’t seem destined to achieve this goal, although he is otherwise a decent young man. And so the parent frets, feeling disappointment and frustration. Meanwhile, another parent, who has a similar child, doesn’t place so much value on this particular direction and doesn’t see it as an essential path for his child to follow. The first man is unhappy, the second is happy. The unhappiness is the creation of the first man’s opinion about things, it does not reside in the thing itself.  The parent is troubled because of his attachment to an idea, something that is external to him and is inessential for his contentment or the well-being of his son, however much he might think otherwise.

Now, you might think that the Stoic is unambitious and that he doesn’t try hard enough (or encourage his kids to try). Regarding the latter, I suspect that a real Stoic would value knowledge and learning and encourage the same in his child, but not make it a cause for desperation and the wringing of his hands. So, while not completely “hands off” the practical things of life, he achieves some distance from pain by thinking things through.

The Stoics desire to live in harmony with the way the world is, rather than to struggle against it. And, here again, they strive to improve themselves — their moral and intellectual state — rather than the state of their bank account or their rank in the pecking order of social and business life. In the words of Epictetus “…as the (working) material of the carpenter is wood, and that of (a sculptor is) bronze, so the subject-matter of the art of living is each person’s own life.” Thus, the philosopher attempts to attain a state of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom; and always turns back to such thoughts in a constant effort to improve himself and practice what he preaches.

Interestingly, Stoics were also way ahead of everyone else in matters of social justice. For them, slaves were seen as the equal of other men, and women were thought to have just as much capacity for rationality as men, views that were unheard of in the ancient world.

And, as you might have noticed, the Stoics were not so far off from the mindset of Zen philosophy. In particular, both recommend living “in the moment,” being aware of the transitory nature of most things that make us unhappy, and the fruitlessness of spending too much time looking back (usually with regret or nostalgia) or looking forward (often in anxiety or the uncertain hope of a better future) while the unrepeatable present moment passes by.

Here are a few quotations from three of the great Stoic philosophers. Best to read them individually and think about each one, rather than to blow through them quickly. Who knows, one or another might change your life.

“But what says Socrates? ‘One man finds pleasure in improving his land, another his horses. My pleasure lies in seeing that I myself grow better day by day.'” (Epictetus, CLIII)

“If you are told that…one speaks ill of you, make no defense against what was said, but answer, ‘He surely (didn’t know) my other faults, (or) else he would have mentioned (those as well)!” (Epictetus, CLXIX)

“What wouldst thou be found doing when overtaken by Death? If I might choose, I would be found doing some deed of true humanity, of wide import, beneficent and noble. But if I (am) not be found engaged in (anything) so lofty, let me hope at least for this…that I may be found raising up in myself that (quality) which has fallen; learning to deal more wisely with the things of sense; working out my own tranquility…” (Epictetus, CLXXXIX)

“(I learned) from Alexander the Platonic, not frequently to say to anyone that I have no leisure; nor continually to excuse (my) neglect of duties…by alleging urgent occupations.” (Marcus Aurelius, I.12)

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“Every moment think steadily…to do what thou hast in hand with perfect and simple dignity, and feeling of affection, and freedom, and justice; and to give thyself relief from all other thoughts. And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of life as if it were the last, laying aside all carelessness and passionate aversion from the commands of reason, and all hypocrisy, and all self-love, and discontent with the portion which has been given to thee. Thou seest how few… things are (required), …which if a man (has in hand), he is able to live a life which flows in quiet, and is like the existence of the gods; for the gods on their part will require nothing more from him who observes these things.” (Marcus Aurelius, II.5)

“Do the things external which fall upon thee distract thee? Give (yourself) time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around (by external events).” Marcus Aurelius, II.7.

“Or is it your reputation that’s bothering you? But look at how soon we’re all forgotten. (It is) the abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of those applauding hands.” (Marcus Aurelius, IV.3)

“Do not waste the remainder of thy life in thoughts about others…For thou losest the opportunity of doing something else when thou hast such thoughts as these: ‘What is such a person doing, and why, and what is he saying, and what is he thinking of, and what is he contriving,’ and whatever else of the kind makes us wander away from our own ruling power.” (Marcus Aurelius, IV.4)

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“…By all means bear this in mind, that within a very short time both thou and he will be dead and soon not even your names will be left behind.” (Marcus Aurelius, IV.6)

—“In the morning when thous risest unwillingly, let this thought be present — I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world.” Marcus Aurelius, V.1)

“Let it make no difference to thee whether thou art cold or warm, if thou art doing thy duty; and whether thou art drowsy or satisfied with sleep; and whether ill-spoken of or praised; and whether dying or doing something else. For it is one of the acts of this life; it is sufficient then in this act…to do well (with) what we have in hand.” (Marcus Aurelius, VI,1)

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“The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like (the wrong-doer).” Marcus Aurelius, VI,6)

“…Keep thyself simple, good, pure, serious, free from affectation, a friend of justice, a worshiper of the gods, kind, affectionate, strenuous in all proper acts. Strive to continue to be such as philosophy wished to make thee. Reverence the gods and help men. Short is life. There is only one fruit of…this life — a pious disposition and social acts. Do everything as a disciple of Antoninus. Remember his constancy in every act which was conformable to reason, and his evenness in all things, and his piety, and the serenity of his countenance, and his sweetness, and his disregard of empty fame, and his efforts to understand things…and how he bore with those who blamed him unjustly without blaming them in return…” (Marcus Aurelius, VI, 30)

“Let not future things disturb thee, for (you will) come to them, if it shall be necessary, having…the same reason which now thou usest for present things.” Marcus Aurelius, VII,8)

“Is any man afraid of change? Why? What can take place without change?…Can anything that is useful be accomplished without change?…” (Marcus Aurelius, VII,18)

“The art of life is more like the wrestler’s art than the dancer’s, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.” (Marcus Aurelius, VII, 61)

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“No longer talk at all about the kind of man who a good man ought to be, but be such.” (Marcus Aurelius, VIII, 16)

“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others…” (Marcus Aurelius, XII,4)

“How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life!” (XII,13)

“If it is not right, do not do it. If it is not true, do not say it.” (Marcus Aurelius, XII,17)

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“(Good men) should not be afraid to face hardships and difficulties, or complain of fate; whatever happens, good men should take it in good part, and turn it to a good end. It is not what you endure that matters, but how you endure it. (Seneca, On Providence)

“Among the many splendid sayings of our friend Demetrius there is this one…’Nothing,’ he said, seems to me more unhappy than the man who has no experience of adversity.’ For he has not been allowed to put himself to the test.” (Seneca, On Providence).

“You are wrong if you think anyone has been exempted from ill; the man who has known happiness for many a year will receive his share someday; whoever seems to have been set free from this has only been granted a delay.” (Seneca, On Providence).

“What is the duty of a good man? To offer himself to fate…The soul that is earthbound and sluggish will follow the safe course; virtue takes to the heights.” (Seneca, On Providence).

“Inside (of yourself the universe has) given you every good; your good fortune is in not needing good fortune (to be happy).” (Seneca, On Providence).

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“Revenge is an admission of pain; a mind that is bowed by injury is not a great mind. The man who has done the injury is either stronger than you or weaker; if he is weaker, spare him, if stronger, spare yourself.” (Seneca, On Anger).

“All of us are inconsiderate and imprudent, all unreliable, dissatisfied, ambitious…all of us are corrupt. Therefore, whatever fault he censures in another man, every man will find residing in his own heart….So let us show greater kindness to one another.” (Seneca, On Anger).

“No man will ever be happy if tortured by the greater happiness of another.” (Seneca, On Anger).

“The greatest outcry surrounds money: this is what brings exhaustion to the courts, sets fathers against children, concocts poisons, hands out swords to assassins and the legions alike; this is what wears the stain of our blood; this that makes the nights of wives and husbands noisy with quarrelling, and the crowd surge against the benches where the magistrates arbitrate; because of money, again, kings grow savage and engage in plunder, overthrowing states built by the long toil of centuries so they can rummage for gold and silver among the ashes of cities.” (Seneca, On Anger).

“…in the future have regard not only for the truth of what you say but for the question (of) whether the man you are addressing can accept the truth.” (Seneca, On Anger).

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“…so long as each one of us prefers to trust someone else’s judgment rather than relying on his own, we never exercise judgment in our lives but constantly resort to trust, and a mistake that has been passed down from one hand to another takes us over and spins our ruin.” (Seneca, On the Happy Life).

“Human concerns are not so happily arranged that the majority favors the better things: evidence of the worst choice is the crowd.” (Seneca, On the Happy Life).

“For as far as pleasure is concerned, though it pours itself all around us and flows in through every channel, charming our minds with its blandishments, and applying one means after another to captivate us wholly or partly, who on earth, who has any trace of humanity left in him, would wish to have his senses tickled day and night and, abandoning the mind, to devote himself to the body?” (Seneca, On the Happy Life).

“For if a man has put himself beyond the reach of all desires, what can he lack? What need does he have of anything external, if he has concentrated all that he possesses in himself?” (Seneca, On the Happy Life).

“In my case, if wealth slips away, it will deprive me only of itself, but you (who value wealth too highly), will be stuck dumb, you will think you have been deserted by your own self if it leaves you; in my eyes wealth has a certain place, in yours it is center-stage; to sum up, my wealth belongs to me, you belong to yours.” (Seneca, On the Happy Life).

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“I say that wealth is not a good as it is, since something that is found among wicked men cannot be called a good; for if it was it would make men good; as it is, since something that is found among wicked men cannot be called a good, I deny it this name. But that it is desirable, that (it) is useful and confers great benefits in life, I do admit.” (Seneca, On the Happy Life.)

“It is truly said…by Curius Dentatus, that he would rather be a dead man than a live one dead; it is the worst of evils to depart from the world of the living before you die.” (Seneca, On the Tranquility of the Mind).

“Nothing, however, delights the mind as much as a loving and loyal friendship.” (Seneca, On the Tranquility of the Mind).

“Small is the part of life that we really live. All that remains of our existence is not actually life but merely time.” (Seneca, On the Shortness of Life).

“…the greatest waste of life exists in postponement: that is what takes away each day as it comes, that is what snatches away the present while promising something to follow. The greatest obstacle to living is expectation, which depends on tomorrow and wastes today. What lies in the hands of Fortune you deal with, what lies in your own hands you let slip. Where are you looking? Where are you bending your aim? All that is still to come lies in doubt: live here and now!” (Seneca, On the Shortness of Life)

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“But those who forget the past, ignore the present, and fear for the future have a life that is very brief and filled with anxiety…Their very pleasures are fearful and troubled by alarms of different kinds; at the very moment of rejoicing, the anxious thought occurs to them: ‘How long will this last?'” (Seneca, On the Shortness of Life)

“No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity. Those who love her gifts as if they are theirs to enjoy forever, who wish to be highly regarded because of them, lie prostrate in mourning whenever these false and fickle delights abandon their vacuous and childish minds that know nothing of any lasting pleasure: but the man who has not become puffed up by happy fortune does not collapse when there is a reversal.” (Seneca, On the Shortness of Life)

“When you have lost one who is most dear, it is stupid indulgence to grieve endlessly, but inhuman hardness not to grieve at all.” (Seneca, On the Shortness of Life).

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The above image is of Marcus Aurelius.

May 26, 2010

Fear of Change: the Therapeutic Implications of Japanese Holdouts

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Things change. The question is, do we change with them? Or, do we instead, continue to operate by the same outdated rules of conduct.

I often said to my patients that they seemed to be behaving as if the conditions of their early life still existed. They had long since fashioned solutions to problems that they faced many years ago, and continued to use the same solutions, even though those methods of living didn’t fit with their current life situation. It is as if one were born in Alaska, learned to wear multiple layers of heavy clothing and then moved to the tropics without a change of attire. The warm clothes were helpful up North, but are a disaster down South.

What does this have to do with the “Japanese Holdouts of World War II? The answer is that these men lived by an outdated set of rules with heartbreaking consequences.

If you recall your history lessons, you will remember that the Japanese soldiers of that period were trained according to the principles of Bushido, a feudal fighting code that derived from the period of Samurai warriors. Above all else, weakness was condemned and surrender was disgraceful. Death by one’s own hand was seen as preferable to permitting oneself to be captured, so as to avoid both personal disgrace and family shame.

The Allied approach to the war against these very soldiers in the Pacific was one that involved “island hopping.” The strategy passed over certain islands, both to save men and ensure that the Allies would be able  to capture those islands that were of the greatest strategic value. When the Japanese surrender came in 1945, numerous Japanese troops found themselves stranded on out-of-the-way Pacific islands, cut-off from their command, and without the capacity for communicating back home. These men neither knew the war was over nor could imagine that any honorable soldier, let alone their entire nation, would surrender. Some were in small groups who gradually died from disease or starvation; others were, at least eventually, alone.

While many never surrendered and died still waiting for reinforcements that never came, it was not uncommon in the late 1940s and 1950s to read news accounts of isolated Japanese combatants giving themselves up. The photo at the top of this page is of Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onada, who finally surrendered in 1974, and would not do so until his former commanding officer, by then a bookseller, personally ordered him to lay down his arms.  At that point, World War II had been over for nearly 30 years.

Thirty years. Yes, 30 years dedicated to a war that was over and a life of desperation that was no longer required.

But how many years, if any, have you given up to a thread-bare, bankrupt strategy of living that has long since outlived its usefulness?. And, more to the point, how many more will you endure? When will you realize that your “solution” has now become the problem?

In my psychotherapy practice I saw numerous variations on this theme. People who were abused or neglected  or criticized as children and who continued to live in terror of disappointing others. Those who found substance abuse the only available way of treating the depression or anxiety they experienced when they were young, and who continued to do so. People who avoided challenges because they were scared of failure, having failed many times in the past. Individuals who wore a chip on their shoulder, forever sensitive to insults and injuries that reminded them of long ago attacks, but now were only injurious in their imagination. And those poor souls who expected rejection because of past rejection. Like the Japanese holdouts, the years pass but the fear doesn’t, and the possibility of satisfying relationships and happiness slips away.

If you still are responding to the present as if it were the past, with solutions that solve little (even if they were once necessary), then it is time to change your life. The barricade of your life’s defenses might be protecting you only from the phantom of an enemy who lives within you, not on the other side of the fortification.

A good therapist is likely to be able to help you develop a new way of living, one more appropriate to the world as it is, not the world as it was; to set aside and heal old wounds.

Is it time?

What is the continuation of your old way of living costing you?

The war, your personal war, might just be over and you don’t know it.

February 4, 2010

What I Learned About Therapy From Frankie Avalon

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Now, you might not think about Frankie Avalon in connection with psychotherapy. But, in a peculiar way, he taught me a bit about treatment many years ago.

Frankie Avalon was performing in Chicago and appeared on a late night local program on Chicago’s ABC affiliate TV station; as did I and two other mental health professionals. Avalon was talking about his career as a singer and one-time pop-idol of the 1960s. The rest of us were speaking about hypnosis. Frankie Avalon was to appear on the first half of the program, while the mental health section was scheduled second.

The program was taped on Thursday for broadcast the next day. And, as things worked out, both the legendary singer and the shrinks all spent a few minutes together in “the Green Room” before the taping began. Avalon asked us a bit about ourselves.  When he discovered that we would be talking about hypnosis, he posed the following question: “Hey, can you guys stop me from smoking?”

One of my fellow-therapists responded, “Do you want to stop?”

“No,” Avalon replied.

We all laughed, but in truth, the singer had demonstrated something very important about therapy. To wit, not everyone who comes to therapy wants to change. Or, at least, they might not want to change the particular thing about themselves that is causing their unhappiness, or suffer the pain of making that change, or explore the unsettling emotions that sometimes surface in treatment.

This often happens in marital therapy too, when one member of the couple doesn’t think he or she is doing anything that bad, and so has no reason to adjust.

Therapists often can help those who recognize that their problems are severe enough to require “whatever it takes” to change. But, we are not much good when working with someone who, like Frankie Avalon, really doesn’t want to do anything different.

Those adults who are forced into therapy, pressured into treatment, or who go because they think that they ought to, are usually setting themselves up for failure. A wise therapist will usually identify this quickly and ask those individuals if they really want to be there — or point out that they don’t seem ready, and that premature therapy would be a waste of their time and money.

As the old joke goes, “How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb?”

One, but the light bulb has to want to be changed.

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The above image is an Electric Light Bulb From Neolux in Studio by KMJ, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.