Archive for June, 2010
Dead Kittens and Prozac
The unexamined life is not worth living. — Socrates
I was watching Craig Ferguson the other night, and he did something that really got me thinking. He apologized to viewers who had complained about a cartoon he’d aired of a kitten being eaten by a shark. As he did so, he shook his head and rolled his eyes a bit, not insincere so much as amazed that anyone could have a problem with a drawing of a kitten being eaten by a drawing of a shark.
I couldn’t agree with him more, edgy though such humor might be (and likely not very funny, either), but unlike him, I think I understand exactly why this would bother people; or some people, at least. It’s the same reason that antidepressant use has doubled in the last ten years and that antidepressants are now the most commonly written prescription in the United States. I’m going to call it the Prozac mentality.
Nobody ever wants to feel sad anymore. And with the “miracle” of modern science, people have come to believe they don’t have to. Countless times, I’ve heard doctors and other experts make statements like, “In this day and age, there’s no reason for anyone to not get help when they’re struggling with emotional issues.” Such statements almost never mean talking to somebody about your anxieties, even when made by psychologists or psychiatrists. By help, they usually mean antidepressants. Seeking medication for sadness is now the norm; in fact, it is considered tragic not to.
I doubt the original intention of these drugs was to turn sadness into a disease, but that is essentially what’s happened. When you seek help from a doctor and can be prescribed medication for what ails you, than by all scientific and medical standards, you have a disease; at the very least, you have a disorder, syndrome, or condition.
Yet despite what modern science would have us believe, sadness is not a medical condition; it is a human condition. It is the human condition. We all carry around grief and pain and hurt for no other reason than because it’s impossible to be alive and not have these things. This is not to say there aren’t circumstances in which people could benefit from a pharmaceutical boost, but these are temporary, such as while dealing with a tremendous loss or extreme stress. And this is not because these drugs make you happy, because they do not. What they make you is numb, but sometimes, numbness is preferable to what life is demanding of you. As a tool to deal with everyday feelings, though, these drugs (in my opinion) create far more problems than they solve.
The medication option has created a world where sadness is something to be avoided at all costs, something “no one should have to endure.” And kittens being eaten by sharks, even if those kittens and sharks are cartoons, are going to make some people sad. Such images could be deemed an unpleasant disturbance in a carefully constructed world, a world of sunlight and surfaces, pop music and comedy, because these are images with the power to jar people from their numbness and remind them of their own uncomfortable feelings. Nobody wants that, and doctors say this is perfectly fine, so people feel completely justified in complaining. Many people have a weird sense of entitlement now about avoiding sad or dark thoughts: “How dare he invade my thoughts with such images! I watch this show because I want to laugh, not cry!”
The Prozac mentality misses the point entirely, and it is an important point to be missed. Sadness is an unavoidable part of life, so the best we can do is deal with it on its own terms, not behave as though it shouldn’t be there. Antidepressants might numb you out enough that you don’t care anymore, but they will never cure sadness because there is no cure for sadness any more than there is a cure for anger or ambition or joy. In fact, a steady diet of medicated avoidance will only make the sadness worse by creating a vicious cycle of feelings that need more and more medication–and denial–to be repressed. It’s a terrible Catch-22, a terrible way to be stuck. And because you want to believe the professionals assuring that you’re not stuck, that you’re doing the right thing, getting unstuck can be very, very difficult.
The worst part of this vicious cycle is the awful disconnectedness from oneself that these drugs cause. It’s ironic, because you take them to feel better, but the way they make you feel better is to further disconnect you from what you so desperately need to re-connect with: your dark side, your fear, your grief, your anxiety, your rage. These dark feelings must be embraced, not dismissed, if you truly want to feel better. But because of the cultural sanction we now have to ignore anything unpleasant, nobody wants to do that anymore. So we end up getting more and more disconnected from ourselves, so much so that seeing something as innocuous as a violent cartoon when we weren’t expecting it has the power to outrage. The Keep on the Sunny Side house of cards is so fragile that we must be vigilant in protecting it from crashing violently down around us.
I’m sure the Prozac mentality isn’t the cause of offense for everybody bothered by the cartoon, but for many, I know I’m not far off.
People want to believe they can have all the ups and none of the downs. Doctors seem to believe they have the power to make this so. And pharmaceutical companies are making billions and billions and billions of dollars selling this delusion. But a delusion it is, because being up and being numb are two vastly different things, and ignoring the downs only creates a larger debt that eventually must be paid. Certainly, sadness is nothing to look forward to, but dealing with it honestly is the only way to transform into the whole person you are meant to be, good and bad, beauty and warts, happy and sad, all combined into the complex whole that makes us human. It will take longer, and it will require more effort, and it will probably change how you define terms like happiness and sadness, but when you see violent cartoons, you will have the capacity to accept them, as well as every other aspect of life, as part of the wonderful, complex dance that makes us who we are.
Hard Work Works, Too, For Being Present
In Be Thankful for Bad Drivers and Other Annoying Things, I wrote that mundane, everyday feelings provide a way into being in the Now (and that learning to live in the Now is the key to what the Buddhists call Enlightenment). Just to clarify, I’m not sure irritation and annoyance are what we want to be experiencing in the present moment, but recognizing them when they’re there can lead to more present moment awareness, and such awareness will inevitably lead to different, less volatile reactions.
Another way to bring yourself into the present moment is physical exertion. When your body is working hard, it’s very, very difficult to be anywhere other than present with it. Your lungs gasp for air. Sweat drips into your eyes and down your back. Your muscles scream for relief. You ache from the effort! And you try to think about other things, but nothing really works. No matter how hard you try, you are stuck in the present moment with your physical discomfort, however unpleasant it may be.
Being present with your body is a benefit of exercise that rarely gets talked about. Whether you are aware of it or not, you are completely in the Now when focused on bodily activities. There is really no other place you can be. It is an unpleasant present moment, much like being annoyed by other people’s mundane self-absorption. But with awareness and acceptance, it, too can be a way into enlightenment.
This also happens during long periods of meditation. In fact, they don’t even have to be that long for most people. My feet start going to sleep after about 20 minutes of sitting in a semi-lotus position and my lower back starts to get stiff. The longest sit I ever did, at a retreat a few years back, was 90 minutes. After the first 30 or so minutes, I was in great physical pain. Both feet were asleep, my butt felt like raw bone grinding against the floor, and my back and shoulders throbbed with pain. But all I could do was endure, even though all I could think about was how excruciatingly uncomfortable I was. After awhile, though, I realized that the pain was happening in the present and that I was in the present because I was unable to distract myself from it. I felt an opening up and a joy in that very discomfort–this was a moment of surrender to the Now. When people say they don’t want to meditate because it’s so uncomfortable, I think they’re missing the point. The discomfort is as much an opportunity to be present with yourself as is the silence. I think the monks who teach the practice understand this and even depend on it to teach people something about being in the Now.
So instead of trying to avoid feeling what’s going on in your body, immerse yourself in it. Try to be aware of every breath and every sweat droplet and every muscle cramp vying for your attention. Since we all experience physical exertion to some degree on a regular basis, it is an excellent opportunity to observe yourself being in the Now and take note of what that feels like.
Be Thankful for Bad Drivers and Other Annoying Things
So I’m reading Eckhart Tolle’s book The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
I’ve done much meditation over the years and have had several fleeting experiences in my life of what Mr. Tolle calls Being—that is, being fully conscious and present without thoughts, in a state best described as beyond thought, that feels complete and blissful and like coming Home. If you’ve ever had the experience of a few moments of total bliss or utter clarity, then you’ve had these experiences, too. According to many spiritual teachers (including Mr. Tolle), this is our natural state, the Enlightened state, there before we were born and continuing after we die (and in my own words, the real meaning of “heaven” or “eternity.”)
But it’s difficult to stay in that state. You would think that being our True Nature, it should be simple, but it isn’t, I think because it’s so ever-present that it’s like trying to see our own eyes or bite our own teeth (to paraphrase Alan Watts). And the demands of the world are pressing, constantly pulling us away from this lovely, subtle place. The physical world is the one that seems the most real. It’s the world we live in the most, and it requires thought, the use of our minds, to successfully navigate! So how could we possibly survive without thought, beyond thought?
We can’t, of course. And no one is suggesting that we ought. But just because this is so doesn’t mean the mind has to run amok all the time, which is an entirely different thing than using it to survive. If you assess your thoughts honestly, you will see that a small fraction of them are actually necessary for survival; the rest are simply excretions of the brain that are completely non-essential, and in some cases harmful, as they are permeated by negativity, anxiety, and fear. Learning to move past this obsessive thinking, this unnecessary habit we’ve had for our lifetimes is, I think, an extremely valuable thing. It is, in fact, the ultimate in “personal growth,” “personal development,” and “self-improvement,” because whatever you call it, it is what all of us are searching for, whether we are aware of it or not. There is no amount of self-esteem building, economic success, or anything else in the “world of constructs,” as the Buddhists call it, that compares.
Living in the Now is hard. There is so much past to ruminate on and so much future to fret about. How do we learn not to do this? Well, there are many, many methods out there, far too many for me to discuss with any authority. I can provide an introduction, but you will have to seek them out for yourself. Google “Eckhart Tolle” or “Buddhism” or “meditation” or “always already” and you will have more results than you can imagine. Or go to a library or bookstore and you will find numerous shelves full of books on this topic. Believe me, there is no shortage of guidance out there, and I doubt there could be a better way to spend your time if it’s something you’re at all curious about.
So, instead of trying to explain Enlightenment, which I couldn’t possibly do, what I really want to address is living in the present moment. More specifically, one really simple thought about it that came to me today while I was driving around running errands. Most of us don’t think about this consciously, but when we’re feeling strong emotions (and not simply thinking about our emotions, which is very different), we are, indeed, in the Now. Joy, surprise, fear, anger, all can only be experienced in the Now. When we respond to a child’s delight, we are responding to that wonderful capacity to be fully present; we recognize its profundity even if we don’t know we recognize it. Also, things like creativity or orgasm; really, focused mental energy of any kind can only be experienced in the Now. When you’re focused on one act or feeling, your you kind of dissolves away and there is only the act, or the feeling, in the utter clarity of the present moment.
Although they’re nice when they happen and certainly something to be cherished, the sublime moments don’t come along all that often, and if we wait for them to experience the present moment, or to find meaning in our lives, we will miss out on much of life itself. It’s a cliché, I know, but life is not so much about all the shining golden times as it is about the in-between spaces that fill the bulk of existence. There is, I realized, a multitude of opportunities to be in the Now in all the mundane, daily events of our lives. Every single moment has the potential to pull us into the Now; we just have to learn how to pay attention.
It’s easy to see that the “stop and smell the roses” moments can bring us into the Now: natural beauty, a playful puppy, or poignant music, for example, can make us pause long enough to be fully present. But as I was running errands, I realized that this works for everything else, too. All the bad drivers, rude cashiers, poor service, loud cell phone conversations, and everything else that annoys me holds the potential to bring me into the Now. Because when I’m angry about other people’s rudeness or incompetence, I’m in the present moment! And these moments are common for me, so they provide a wonderful opportunity to notice being in the Now. With this attitude, not only can I learn from my own shortcomings, I can cherish them for what they have to offer me.
It may be different things for you. The point is not the annoyance; it’s discovering that the rather bland emotions you most frequently experience can be a channel into the Now. And not just emotions, but anything that brings about focused concentration for you, anything from driving to listening to music to playing a video game. Notice how you feel at these times, when the you is suspended and there is just the moment, and you will have begun learning what it is to be in the Now.
What a fascinating idea, that the most ordinary feelings and events evoked by everyday life can have so much to offer. And yet I am certain that this is true. Pausing to feel, to just be present with whatever that feeling may be, to breathe and to rest and to embrace, is really, ultimately, all there is. It is the key to happiness in the only way it really matters.
In Relationships, Good Doesn’t Always Mean Forever
In the world of romantic relationships, people tend to think that if it doesn’t last forever, then it was a failure. People are looking for “soulmates,” for that one person who they are “meant” to be with. If a person turns out to not be this, there is almost always a sense of failure involved in the realization. And the cultural expectation is that marriages should last forever, so divorce is seen as a disaster, a sure indication of inadequacy, deficiency, and maybe even moral bankruptcy. “Forever” is, for most people, the ultimate goal of a romantic relationship.
I would like to declare the opposite: A relationship can be both successful and temporary. Forever is a somewhat arbitrary gauge of success, foisted on us by a culture that has never bothered to question the concept. “‘Til death do us part” is taken for granted as the only right way to view a long-term romantic liaison. But we can learn to think differently about relationships.
Here’s a novel suggestion: We can choose whether or not “forever” is the gauge we want to use to measure the success or failure of our romantic relationships. (Or, for that matter, relationships in general.) Because the truth is, there are many, many other ways to judge the success or failure of a relationship.
First of all, the vast majority of romantic relationships are temporary. You meet someone, date a few times, or for a few months, but for whatever reason you find you aren’t compatible, and you move on. Sometimes, you fall in love with someone who doesn’t love you back, or vice-versa. Sometimes, circumstances prevent the connection from lasting. For myriad reasons, the overwhelming number of people you meet and date are not going to remain a constant in your life. And that’s just fine. Healthy, even. Finding out what what isn’t a good fit for you is all part of narrowing the search and improving your ability to find someone who is a good fit. Even if all you learned was what you don’t want, the relationship, and the person, taught you something valuable.
This all makes good sense. But I believe the same is true for long-term relationships and yes, even marriages–and even marriages where there are children involved. If people aren’t happy together–and if one person isn’t happy, neither really is–then they shouldn’t stay together, and doing so isn’t good for anybody, not even the children. I would submit especially the children.
Yes, it is sad when marriages break up. No matter how strained a relationship might be, there is always a sense of loss that comes from its permanent break. But that sense of loss needn’t be compounded by feelings of failure and remorse that have nothing to do with the relationship itself and everything to do with societal expectations. Going through a breakup is painful enough. You just don’t have to do that to yourself. And learning to take realistic stock of what happened will inevitably lead you to that conclusion.
If a long-term relationship breaks up, there are always legitimate reasons. These reasons can be many and varied, but mostly have to do with change. People grow and change, and that’s good, but sometimes it means people grow apart. Or sometimes, change isn’t for the better, and one partner develops a problem with, say, addiction, that results in emotional distance or sometimes even abuse. Sometimes, people are too immature to know how to make a relationship work, but that doesn’t become apparent, or at least unbearable, for several years, and a couple of children, into the relationship. Sometimes, people simply get married for the wrong reasons in the first place and eventually gain the courage to do what they really want to do. When this happens, it should be celebrated, not mourned! “Falling out of love” is a facile concept that doesn’t explain anything, but there are always, always valid underlying reasons why a long-term relationship falls apart. If both parties aren’t ready, willing, and able to make it work–and understand the work involved–then ending it is for the best on every conceivable level.
Of course there is loss and grief. Of course there is adjustment. But if a relationship isn’t working and both people aren’t willing to work at it, then ending it is the right thing. In a weird way, it is actually something to be celebrated. Even if it wasn’t your choice, some part of you knows this is true. Being with someone who no longer wants to be with you erodes self-esteem and destroys confidence. Only when it ends are new beginnings possible. And this is something to rejoice, even if it is not what you wanted.
Because with those new beginnings comes new knowledge. All people and all relationships have something to teach you, but the most painful ones usually hold the most valuable lessons. The pain opens and softens you. It’s humbling. It creates new windows of awareness that weren’t there before, insights about yourself and what you really want and how you might go about getting it. Not that this pain is something to deliberately seek out, but we all have our share of it, and it can provide opportunities for growth like nothing else in the entire realm of human experience. In this sense, even if only in retrospect, the pain of a long-term relationship breakup is something to be embraced–and milked for all it’s worth, which can be a lot.
And yes, children of divorced parents have a whole new set of complicated issues to sort through that they didn’t ask for and don’t deserve. And yes, this is sad. But not as sad as it is for children to endure parents who don’t want to be together, stay together. Doing so provides models of unhappiness and dishonesty that can only be bad for children. It is far better to deal directly with emotional issues and be a model to your children of how to pursue their own happiness. I’ve always believed that people who say they’re “staying together for the children” are using their children as an excuse: to avoid the painful feelings of loss and the hard work of making a new life for yourself. Because in this scenario, everybody loses.
As sad as ending a relationship can be, it’s far sadder to stay in one that isn’t working. Forever may be the cultural standard, but it doesn’t have to be your standard. When we can appreciate and even celebrate all aspects of our lives, whether permanent or impermanent, happy or painful, what we want or what we don’t want, then we will have moved a long way toward taking responsibility for our own happiness, thus making it far more likely that we actually might find someone we truly enjoy and want to grow old with. But even more important is knowing that finding such a person is not necessary to a sense of wholeness, and merely icing on the cake of a life well-lived.