Well-Adjusted to a Profoundly Sick Society?

"It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

--Jiddu Krishnamurti

I spent much of my youth taking cues from the world around me as to what was of value in life, what living well meant and central to this was the notion of being well-adjusted or healthy. My youth was a bit of a bumpy ride as a result--I was diagnosed with a brain tumour the year I turned 21. Even now though, this idea of health seems to be something of an obsession, trouble is what do we really mean by it?

The whole conception seems to set up a series of expectations that life, as it is, cannot sustain. Ideas surrounding mental health, in particular, seem to be fraught with problems because our conceptions often have a heavy cultural bias--we are predisposed through social conditioning to view certain behaviours as favourable and the mark of the well-adjusted, and others as not. Much of our behaviour is dictated by these invisible social filters, and people suffer as a result.

For example, how I understand schizophrenia--what my beliefs are about it--will determine my attitude and behaviour towards people who are schizophrenic. If I understand schizophrenia as a genetic disease that warps the mind in inhuman ways, I will see people suffering from schizophrenia as broken, damaged and, let's be honest, less than human. I will do this because of an ideology that enables me to distance myself from that which scares me or makes me otherwise uncomfortable--I am not that! On the other hand, if I understand schizophrenia like Janis Hunter Jenkins, I may come to see it as emblematic of fundamental human processes at work in all of us, albeit in an amplified form. Who among us doesn't talk to themselves, or fall prey to irrational paranoid thoughts, or experience extremes of emotion that own us sometimes? This perspective allows me to see someone challenged by schizophrenia not as something other than myself, but more as a variant image of myself--very human indeed.

What I mean to say is that some of our notions of health are highly biased and politically charged. If as a society we view mental and physical challenges to health as signs of a failure to live 'right', we will only succeed in alienating us from ourselves. Is diabetes to be regarded as a disease or a brilliant evolutionary adaptation to environmental challenges in times gone by? These are powerful judgements with significant consequences depending on the way we understand things.

It isn't an accident that our society marginalizes the mentally and physically infirm, the sick, the old, and the poor. We need to question the social and cultural rationales that maintain this system of marginalization. And, as Krishnamurti points out, can we really regard ourselves as beacons of radiant health when our behaviour successfully conforms to, and perpetuates such sick societal norms?

The cultural biases that favour a lithe, ultra-fit body are equally pernicious in the way they equate the failure to achieve this arbitrary ideal with a failure to be well-adjusted and 'healthy' or even attractive. There is no uncontestable truth here either. And, again, it is the judgement attached to any perceived failure which has such large social ramifications--we often make ourselves sick in pursuit of such ideals, as rampant and widespread cases of clinical depression in society attest.

We need to cut ourselves and others a little slack. Life will never live up to our idealized versions of it. Ideals need to be handled with care, they exist as important sources of inspiration, but they have a dreadful tendency to turn into dogma, and at that point they become a sort of pollution in our life.

We need to re-examine our social and cultural biases using the edict of doing no harm as our guide. 

Check this out: Jean Vanier - Becoming Human

Voting with Our Behaviour

"When the greatness of Tao is present, actions arise from one's own heart. When the greatness of Tao is absent, action comes from the rules of 'kindness' and 'justice'. If you need rules to be kind and just, if you act virtuous, this is a sure sign that virtue is absent." --Lao Tzu

Our behaviour speaks volumes in a world full of beautiful sounding rhetoric, but even a person's actions are not always so straightforward. Many of us want to appear virtuous, cultivate an image of ourselves in our own minds as compassionate people, but are we really as compassionate as we believe ourselves to be? I have a feeling that in many ways the answer to this question is no. 

Actions speak louder than words, yet it is possible to be treated in a 'kind' fashion by someone, and still come away from the experience 'not feeling the love'. True kindness, love, and compassion speaks for itself, it leaves you in no doubt--you know you are loved because you can feel it in your bones, so to speak. However, approximations abound that can confuse the uneducated heart.

People want to be thought well of, no one wants to be stigmatized as a selfish, unkind, boor, and yet the state of the world would suggest that the lack of empathy that results from extreme self-absorbtion, is, to a significant degree, reigning the day in people's lives. I'm not sure how to account otherwise for the presence of violence in society, the high rates of divorce, nor the persistent presence of homeless people on our streets. I don't mean to suggest here, that we judge others and ourselves and set a plan of reform in motion, but I do think that examining the actual contents of our hearts is in order. 

Forcing ourselves to be 'kind' and do the 'right' thing will get us nowhere. I'm also not suggesting that divorce or the presence of homeless people etc., is necessarily an uncontestable sign of the failure to love well enough, but I am suggesting that to the extent that our hearts remain uneducated to the true nature of love, is the extent to which we will manage our affairs with others in a crude, primitive and self-biased fashion.

There is no more important thing in life, than love. I believe that the way we understand and manage the contents of our minds and hearts has great bearing on our actions, which is why it is so important to take the time to educate them. I am not speaking necessarily of book learning, but more the sort of education that results from honest observation and thoughtful examination of the contents of one's own heart and mind. This is an inside job. It is also a lifetime practice, a work in progress, that evolves slowly and it isn't always easy. Patience is required and persistence also. We need to become good researchers. 

I think love evolves and is a natural product of such efforts. A gradual transformation. How, you ask? Again, I can only offer what has been helpful to me. Each of us need to find our own way, different things work for different people. However, here are a few things to consider implementing:

Solitude. Making space in one's life for solitary practices like meditation, where you do nothing but sit or walk quietly watching the contents of your mind and heart, come and go, is essential. It is only in this space of quiet contemplation that you can be spoken to, that your heart's voice can be clearly heard/felt, and that your mind will have a chance to rest. This is important if we want our minds and hearts to be functioning optimally.

Simple living. To the degree that our lives are over-populated with material and mental distractions, is the degree to which our ability to love will be compromised because there will be no time to feel in depth, or contemplate in depth--to listen and be receptive to what life is trying to convey to us. We will instead be scurrying around trying to keep all the balls in the air. We will miss life, rather than be deeply and meaningfully engaged with it, in a word, intimate with it. And intimacy is a product of love.

Self-care. Self-care is the positive aspect of self-interest. I am speaking here about the importance of being a good care-giver to your body and soul. Eat well, but don't become fanatical about it. Exercise regularly, but don't become preoccupied with obsessions relating to your vanity. Be conscientious about the choices you make, but don't become dogmatic about them. Self-care is all about being good to oneself--honouring and respecting the gift, that is your physical vessel, home of your soul.

I believe we have a tremendous capacity for loving both ourselves and others. I believe the two are inextricably connected and contingent upon one another, and so it is important to make love a priority--not love as a romantic and highly sentimentalized idea, but love as caring in action. 

We vote with our behaviour whether we want to or not, what are you voting for?

The Wisdom of Humour

It is said that every wise person is marked distinctively by the presence of humour in their lives. Not sarcastic humour or cynical humour, but a humour which is born of a mind and heart that is capable of embracing all of life--the good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly. A sense of humour marked by love, humility and joy.

Humour's main virtue is that it injects a sense of levity, of lightness into our lives--it is heart-opening. It is all too easy in the midst of life's challenges to slip into pessimism, to take it all personally and forget that we have options, the most important of which is to suspend judgement for a moment so as to stem the tide of any potential free-fall into negative thinking when we are confronted with a challenging situation or problem. 

Negative thinking, like positive thinking, can be predicated on misguided notions regarding the truth of any given situation, and so it is wise to suspend judgement for a time in order to create room for the whole picture to reveal itself. 

Refining such habits can be helpful so, here are a few key things that go far toward putting a smile on my face:

Minimalism. For me personally, living a spare existence has gone far towards injecting a little levity into my life. I am not burdened taking care of things that don't add to the quality of my experience of being alive. The physical space around me is more vibrant--it breathes--and the possessions I do have add just the right touch of intimacy and warmth. This makes it much easier to attend to any mental and emotional dissonance that may come my way, thus rendering me lighter in spirit and more positive in outlook.

Take nothing personally. People are influenced and shaped by such a diverse number of factors, that nothing they say or do can possibly be reduced to something exclusively and personally related to the one individual they are directed at. The way people are raised, the societal influences, sub-culture influences and a whole host of other influences all convene to shape a person's thoughts, choices and actions, very little of which is related exclusively and inextricably to one sole individual. We are each responsible for the management of our own thoughts, choices and actions, so buyer beware! When I practice taking nothing personally a funny thing happens--compassion for both myself and others is engaged, allowing me to find humour in some of the things which used to cause me distress.

Cultivate a lighter touch. Being sincere in your interactions with others and yourself is dreadfully important, but being too serious is often problematic. When we are too serious our perceptions of a situation are often being run through a lens which is distorting what we are seeing. Some things, obviously, need to be taken seriously, but much of what we get excited and worked up about is the result of misguided expectations and the urge to control life in order to quell our fear and existential angst. This is ultimately a losing proposition. We need to learn to manage this angst with a greater degree of self-sufficiency. This requires wisdom and humour. The more deeply I am acquainted with the true nature of existence--its complexity and paradoxical elegant simplicity--the lighter my touch. We know very little about how all this works at the end of the day.

Reality is that we control very little in our lives and that we often make ourselves perfectly miserable in pursuit of ultimate security and safety. We are born, we live and we die. Nothing will change this. Nothing is wrong with this. 

We need to demonstrate a degree of respect and reverence for this phenomenon and I believe to the degree that we do, the lightness and good humour natural to our being will make itself manifest.

Tips For Navigating the Dark Side of Life

Much writing that I come across seems to avoid acknowledging the pain that is part and parcel of our lives, and I think this is a mistake. Life's imperfections can be a source of vitality. Gandhi remarked that his imperfections and failures were as much a 'blessing from God' as his successes and talents, and that he lay them both at the feet of the creator. 

I think it is our fear of the dark that sends us all diving for cover in denial and other forms of escape. Problem is we never really escape the dissonance, it is always there waiting to be attended to, thriving in direct proportion to our neglect of it.

My personal experience has led me to believe that the shadow aspect of life, although intimidating, is manageable and simply requires us to summon a little courage in order to deal with it. The dissonance only becomes problematic, as I say, in direct proportion to the degree that one tries to ignore its inevitability. 

Three things that I have found helpful are: 

Meditation. This is helpful because the very nature of meditation requires us to be present to all the variety of emotion and sensation that comes flowing through us--with life as it is. It is simple to do--one sits, and does nothing but breathe and feel, breathe and feel, for 15-30 minutes. The simplicity of the act belies the powerful transformations that can manifest without one having to do anything. Thich Nhat Hanh has compared meditation to composting--an act wherein all the energy of the mind is given a space to be transformed by the heat of our awareness and attention. The edge is taken off our angst and solutions to problems made more readily apparent. This is worth taking time out for.

Reality Check. We have a dreadful tendency to project our expectations, wishes and desires on to the people and things that populate our life, trouble is that these projections often bear little resemblance to reality and so it is wise to become increasingly aware of just where the boundary between fantasy and reality lies. Sometimes this boundary is a little fuzzy, most of the time, if we are being brutally honest with ourselves, it is fairly clear. The people and things near and dear to you will be grateful for any transformation which allows you to withdraw your projections and see them as they are, not as you would wish them to be, or deceive yourself into believing they ought to be.

Connection. We are all connected here on this planet. Our belief, sometimes, that we are alone in our suffering is a mistaken belief. People the world over experience the pain and suffering that is an integral part of life. The surest way to make yourself miserable is to live in denial of this fact. We need to remember that we are not alone in our suffering, that our failures are just part of life, not some aberrant, freakish thing for which we need feel excessive shame and the rush to do damage control. They are also the source for positive transformational changes, and a stimulus for creativity. Reaching out to connect with others is often very edifying and cathartic, as is taking some time for solitude in the event that you need space. Connection to others and to one's own soul is of paramount importance in successfully managing dissonance.

I am not a psychotherapist or a counsellor by training, so there is more to successfully managing the shadow aspects of life than I have laid out here. My offering comes out of my own experience with these things and so is a partial picture. I hope it is nonetheless helpful. 

Life is bittersweet at the end of the day. There will be moments of beauty and joy, but there will also be moments of heartache and hardship. The way to stack the odds in favour of the former is to allow the dissonance, don't make it wrong or right, breathe it in, and breathe it out--let it flow through you, let it speak to you, rather than, in denial, risk it lodging permanently deep inside you where it will only fester. Equanimity awaits.

The Ideology of a Butterfly?

“The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness.” --John Muir

I take this to mean that when we spend time in wild natural settings, soaking in our surroundings, being 'one with nature', we are imbibing the essence of life.

The modern world, particularly the urban landscape, is so full of manmade distractions that we frequently forget what it means to be alive at all. 

When I leave the city to spend time in the wilderness, I am made aware of how basic life really is and how little it really requires of me in some respects. I experience a sense of release from the usual demands of enculturation which would have me scurrying after this goodie or that prize. Food tastes better. The air is perfumed with the smell of poplar trees, ferns and moss—free aromatherapy! It doesn’t take much to make one satisfied and happy in such an environment. 

Nature is important because it puts us back in touch with who we actually are, stripped of the props we may routinely employ to maintain appearances. Things in nature are humble. 

A butterfly doesn’t pretend to be something that it is not—it is what it is by nature. A butterfly’s being is organic, born of the same mystery that we are. You can feel this when you allow yourself to be open and receptive: a part of things, rather than apart from things in the wilderness.

The wilderness is part of our own nature, yet we seem relatively blind to this for all the contrivances we humans come up with in the name of making life easier. In spite of our modern conveniences life is certainly not easier, in many respects it is more complicated and difficult. We have borrowed from Peter to pay Paul. Life is burdened with expectations relating to success—wealth, status, power and luxury—implying that if we but attain a certain level of success happiness and an easy life will be assured. 

Let me assure you this has never been true for me. Happiness seems to manifest through participation in the small and ordinary in life— feeling the rain on my face, the wind in my hair, watching the flames from a campfire ascend into the black of night…

Nature points us back to our Source, the true nature of existence. It leads us back to ourselves and the joy inherent in basic living—a modest living that takes only what is necessary, ensuring that there will be enough left to share with others. Our happiness will not be compromised, nor a basic comfort, Thoreau made that clear enough.

One cannot challenge the ideology of a butterfly. The butterfly is doing what it is by nature intended to do. Can the same be said of us? Nature is a good teacher if we will but listen to what she has to say.