As many a bumper sticker has reminded us, Jesus was the quintessential communist. One of the greatest hypocrisies on Earth is that Jesus and so much of the Bible are all about minimizing materialism, rat-racing, and selfishness, but here we are, the most Jesus-y and Bible-est country on Earth, and yet the most materialistic, ambitious, and (in ways) selfish. We should not want! Green pastures and still waters should be plenty.
DON’T LET AMBITION CONSUME YOU
The following anecdote is one of the most compelling I’ve ever encountered, hands-down. I read it somewhere years ago, but I haven’t been able to relocate the source, despite my most valiant Googling efforts. As I recall, the author had described a conversation between a psychologist and a gerontologist (or was it a neurologist and an oncologist?). It went something like this:
Psychologist:
“Gollee, doing the work you do, you must see a lot of people die.”
Gerontologist:
“Oh, yeah. Almost every day.”
Psychologist:
“Wow. I bet you hear a lot of incredible things. Do people ever share with you their greatest regrets in life? If so, is there one particular regret that’s most often expressed?”
Gerontologist:
“Oh, sure; that’s easy. Unexpressed affection. People regret not telling others how much they cared about them.
I don’t know where to begin. Of course, the explicit message is a poignant slap in the face, that we are overly shy about telling people that we care about them—and what a horrific tragedy to finally come to terms with this when it’s too late. It hurts just to think about it. Re-inspired by the passage while editing my book, I recently told one of my best friends what I’d say at his eulogy if he were to die before me, and it was a wonderful moment indeed, one of the best I’ve had in a long time and will never forget.
More generally speaking, the story put me in the habit of looking at my life from my fantasized deathbed. Nothing else has helped me more to keep things in perspective. When I contemplate my life from my deathbed, my accomplishments, such as my college degrees and frequent flier miles earned, seem so much less important than they do from where I am now.
What matters more, suddenly, is whether I enjoyed my daily life or worried it away or rushed through it. Was I as good to people as I could have been? Was I present with and attentive to people and places and experiences, or was I always preoccupied about moving onto the next one? And, of course, did I tell my friends, “Hey, I’ve been thinking about you” or “It’s good to hear your voice.” Or, God forbid, “I care about you.”
Why does this exercise work so well? On our deathbed, we are able to see the world unpolluted by our ambitions and aspirations—we’re no longer preoccupied about the future. And we’re honest, because the defenses are down. If we can harness our deathbed vision now, we can begin benefitting before it’s too late. One’s deathbed is a bad time to have an epiphany, especially the ones about wasting our lives obsessing about success. You no longer have time to mentally process your newfound realization, much less do anything about it—such as live some of your life according to the epiphany!
We Americans have to be particularly careful, as rat-racing to attain our dreams is a cultural imperative. I worry that Americans experience an inordinate number of deathbed regrets because of this drive. It’s so bad over here that sometimes I wonder if it’s in our genes. There’s a phenomenon in evolution called speciation in which the formation of new species is greatly accelerated because some plants and animals are suddenly—at least in cosmic terms—sequestered from the pack. It can occur, for example, when land masses become separated by water, creating different ecosystems and geographies, leaving the respective inhabitants to evolve down independent pathways.
Perhaps the colonization of America was a speciation of sorts. It must have taken a special type of person to get on a boat during the 16th-19th centuries and make his or her way across the Atlantic Ocean to these mysterious lands. Those people were dissatisfied with the status quo in Europe, and ambitious and restless enough to do something incredible about it. And here we are today: a nation of restlessly ambitious people. Americans
“for ever imagine the Lands further off are still better than those upon which they are already settled”; if they attained Paradise, they would move on if they heard of a better place farther west.12
That may sound like a compliment to some, but I think it can be more of a criticism. We’ve finally run out of frontier but can’t seem to relax and enjoy what we have. Sure, restlessness makes for some great conquest and technological advancement, but we’ve run ourselves ragged in the process. We’re going to go to our graves realizing that we rushed our lives away trying to conquer.
It’s not just the American Dream of a successful career, loving family, and cozy wine/cheese tasting parties with our successful friends. We run ourselves ragged competing for minutiae, like finding the best parking spot. I’m amazed at the effort people will expend to get a parking spot near the entrance, like it’s some sort of life-or-death competition. Personally, I always go straight to the empty part of the lot, in the back, and walk. The walk feels good, and then I chuckle inside when I pass the person that I saw waiting for a spot, still sitting in their car, all pissy.
Even our vacations are rat races, desperate attempts to see as much as possible and to document how much fun we had. Pascal wondered, again with hyperbole, if we’d even vacation at all if it wasn’t for the lure of the attention we get upon our return: “one would not make a voyage never to speak of it, and for the mere pleasure of seeing, without the hope of ever talking about it to someone.”13
Speaking of “wanderlust,” in 2008 I had the pleasure to visit Moab, Utah and the surrounding areas, easily one of the most fascinating and beautiful places I’ve ever been. However, similar to my monster-truck rally experience, an odder memorable moment was of a fellow photographer. I was standing at a lonely fork in the trail one day, debating which way to go, and this man holding a camera literally runs up upon me, panting and sweating, and asks me which trail has the best arches so he wouldn’t waste any time on the lesser of the two. I have to note, too, that he wasn’t American: He was European—and Eastern at that! I was mortified, being a big fan of Hungarian Bela Tarr’s movies—beautifully unhurried and existential—now confronted with a man who could have been Hungarian himself, acting an American fool. I always had this fantasy that Eastern Europeans didn’t do this sort of thing, but I reckon they do, too. Sigh.
Of course, I’m not disparaging all ambition and recreation. Like everything else, just own it—don’t let it own you. That includes everything from your job to your vacation and even your volunteer work.
I spent Christmas 2011 at Big Bend National Park (just like I did in 2010) to escape Christmas and capitalism and whatnot. I swear to God: Those Lexus commercials where some chump gets his wife a beautiful car with a big red bow around it make me feel ill. All I can think about are the people in my very own town who can’t even afford one crappy car for the entire family and so they have to ride the God-danged bus around. And those jewelry commercials that open with some histrionic supermodel contemplating, “How will I know that he loves me?” Darlin’, if proof means him wasting thousands of dollars on metal and rocks for you to hang on your face, there’s something wrong with your relationship, in my opinion.
In any event, that trip ended up being one of my favorite experiences ever: It snowed when I was there! It was so beautiful and surreal, Big Bend being in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert, all rocky and cactus-y the vast majority of the time. And the solitude was divine. I went about thirty hours once without seeing another human being, or any evidence of their existence. It was just me, hiking through the mountainous desert, bundled up quite snuggly, trudging through the most perfect amount of snow there could be.
When I arrived in the evening of the fourth day to return my solo-hiker pass to the ranger station at Panther Junction (so they know I
made it out alive), it was closed. The sun was setting and it was starting to become dark. Something stirring in the cacti nearby broke the peace and abruptly grabbed my attention. I could see an amorphous blob of animal, but was unable to identify it. For a moment, I thought it might be a bear, and I kinda freaked out. Then I heard another rustling, even closer to me, and could then make out the perps a little better: They were collared peccary, a.k.a. javelina, these adorable little pig-looking fuzzy monsters. (We’re not supposed to call them “pigs,” however. Rumor has it that they’re not as genetically pig as they appear—I read once they’re actually closer to hippopotami! I like to hope that’s true.)
While I was trying to get a better look, this roundish family of humans pulled in to the parking lot where I was standing, two pre-or-early-teens sisters, their slightly older brother, and mother. I immediately rolled my eyes, figuratively, and wrote the experience off as thereby terminated. But, I was so wonderfully wrong: It got better. Forcing myself to be friendly, I pointed the javelina out to the first sister who was running up, mostly just holding out hope that she’d slow down and not scream and the critter would linger.
I’ll be damned: She was captivated as well, as opposed to spastic. Then the rest of the family approached, one-by-one, mom, of course, bringing up the rear, a nice, sincere smile on her face. I was suddenly impressed by how they all behaved; none of them got too close, they just stood there, right there with me, and watched. Amazingly, they didn’t scare it away, so the moment continued. In fact, it continued for long enough that I eventually walked off, when I was ready to tend to my business.
When I returned from the bathroom, the javelina and the kids had relocated, the former now standing on an asphalt trail, just eying the kids, and them in return, like some sort of Mexican standoff. The boy was crouched down, literally less than ten feet from it, about to take a picture with his phone. As it became clear that it was too dark, one of the sisters firmly but politely told her brother not to use the flash, to just skip the picture, otherwise he was going to scare it. Inexplicably, he complied. And he didn’t even appear the least bit grumpy about it, instead seeming to agree it was a good idea. They kept staring at the animal until finally it snapped, turned, and trotted off, clippity-clop along that little asphalt path. One of the girls, speaking for both of us, said, “Aww!”
I was especially moved by that one girl’s awareness and sensitivity, her ability to have the experience and be present in it without disturbing the cosmos by having to take a picture so that she could brag to her friends about it later. And I was moved by her brother’s flexibility. I really liked that family; it was a great end to an awesome vacation. My only regret is that I didn’t say something to them, especially to mom, to let her know that her kids make a great impression. I suspect she’d appreciate hearing that, but she probably doesn’t need to hear it. They’re alright, and they must know it, deep down. I bet there’s never been a lot of yelling in their home, and there’s been little to no inappropriate corporal punishment. I bet those parents have paid attention to each of those kids since each was born. Everyone listens to everyone else in that family, at least much of the time. I know they do; I saw it firsthand.
THE END
* * *
1 Frankl, V. E. (1985). Man’s search for meaning (p. 17). New York: Washington Square Press.
2 Gilbert, D. (2006). Stumbling on happiness. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
3 Rawlings, G. B. (Ed. & Trans.). (2009). Pascal’s pensées; or, thoughts on religion (p. 65). Charleston, SC: Bibliolife. (Original work published 1670).
4 Ibid., p. 66-67.
5 Quick psychology lesson: Negative reinforcement is when a behavior is encouraged because it is associated with the removal of an aversive stimulus. Positive reinforcement is when a behavior is also encouraged, but because it is associated with the addition of a desirable stimulus. Punishment is neither of these: It’s when a behavior is discouraged by associating it with the addition of an aversive stimulus.
6 I’m borrowing the term “pausing” from another highly recommended book, Tara Brach’s (2003) Radical acceptance: Embracing your life with the heart of a buddha. New York: Bantam.
7 Existential Psychotherapy, p. 447.
8 TEDxEmory (Producer). (2013). Depression is a disease of civilization by Stephen Ilardi, PhD. [Video lecture]. Retrieved from tedxemory.org ; For more info about the treatment, see http://psych.ku.edu/tlc/
9 Stumbling on Happiness, p. 218.
10 Louis C. K. (Writer, producer, & director; also produced by D. Becky, D. Bernath, M. Caputo, S. Hartman, & C. Jenowitz). (2010). Hilarious. [TV special]. USA: Epix.
11 de Mello, A. (1988). One minute wisdom (p. 99). New York: Image Books.
12 Miller, J. C. (1943). Origins of the American revolution (p. 77). Boston: Little, Brown, & Company. The portion in quotes is cited by Miller as follows: Lord Dunmore to Lord Dartmouth, December 24, 1774, P.R.O., C.O. 5, 1533, Library of Congress Transcript.
13 Pascal’s Pensées; or, Thoughts on Religion, p. 43.
APPENDIX
How to Ruin Your Kids without Even Trying
… if you think that the greatest ideal in life is to be invulnerable, then you are on your way to becoming geological rather than spiritual.
— Alan Watts, Still the Mind
PSYCHOLOGISTS ARE OFTEN STEREOTYPED as crazy themselves, driven to the profession in hopes to one day understand their own pathologies. I’m not thrilled whenever I realize I’m cliché, but I have to be honest and acknowledge that this has definitely been the case for me.
I took my first formal psychology class over twenty-five years ago in high school and, being crazy as shit, have had my nose to the mental health grindstone ever since. Actually, as I explained earlier, I had begun studying psychology informally even during elementary school because I had this peculiar obsession with substance abuse. I had read several books about drugs, grown-up chapter books, before I had even left the sixth grade.
Despite all the psychology I obsessively consumed, it wouldn’t be until graduate school at the University of Kansas that I even heard of the notion of emotional validation. Remarkable, because of all the psychological phenomena I have learned about to date I feel it has been the most ubiquitous and relevant issue in chronic emotional turmoil. I don’t know why, but it’s strangely difficult to find it explicitly addressed in textbooks and such. I just checked my bookshelf at home, and of the eighteen books that I thought might discuss it, only three have the term (or some derivative thereof) in their indices or tables of contents. So pay attention! If more people were more acutely aware of how this works, I think the world would be a significantly better place. I promise this is relevant for you, one way or another.
In a nutshell, emotional validation occurs after one person discloses his or her inner experience to another person (typically verbally, but also via body language), and the recipient/audience (validating) person consumes the disclosure attentively. Although the listener may not agree with the speaker’s experience, he accepts it as real (valid)—given the speaker’s circumstances, including his temperament, if applicable.
For instance, a third-grader, at breakfast, nervously expresses to her dad that she is scared about her spelling test scheduled later that day. Good Dad validates her experience by disengaging from his paper—not by merely peeking around the corner, but by putting it down so that his kid knows he’s paying attention and isn’t taking her fear lightly. There are an infinite number of validating verbalizations, but he could say something along the lines of “Oh, Sweetie; I can see you’re worried. I’m sorry you’re stressed. I know how important it is for you to do well at school. But don’t forget: I’m going to love you no matter what happens!” It really is okay to talk like this; it’s never killed anyone.
That’s a fantastic parent. First, he simply makes it clear he’s paying attention. Then he acknowledges his kid’s suffering without belittling it. Next, Dad offers reassurance, the greatest of
which being that, ultimately, you don’t need to be afraid because your greatest fear that my affection for you may depend on this silly test is only that, a fear that is not well founded. And I love the part where he doesn’t make promises about what’s gonna happen—he leaves it open that she may not do well! But the earth would keep spinning, even in the worst case scenario. Validate, then soothe; don’t disregard, and don’t make unrealistic promises about things you can’t control.
Alternatively, there are also an infinite number of ways to not validate his daughter’s experience, that is, to invalidate it. Unfortunately, this process takes much less energy and effort and is therefore the default response from many preoccupied adults. The easiest way to invalidate is simply to not pay attention, to remain buried in the newspaper, and simply grunt or something. Even worse, dad could react with frustration and frown or scowl or say something like, “Oh, honey, you’re such a baby. You always get worried over nothing.” Of course, the sky’s the limit: Dad can be downright mean, or even abusive. But we don’t need to illustrate the more dramatically invalidating responses at this time; the subtle ones are sufficient. And by “subtle,” I mean not obvious: Don’t underestimate the impact of subtle invalidations. For invalidation to be toxic, it doesn’t have to be dramatic—it only has to be habitual. Subtle and habitual can do the trick, at least in susceptible individuals.
One of the diagnosable conditions associated with growing up in a toxically invalidating environment is borderline personality disorder. At least where I was educated, Marsha Linehan was regarded as the guru on the topic, having written a popular treatment manual for professionals.1 It’s also worth noting that in 2011 Marsha came out of the closet to talk about her own personal experience suffering from the condition, complete with suicide attempts, self-mutilation, and necessary but not-so-therapeutic psychiatric hospital admissions.2 And for those who learned about borderline personality from Fatal Attraction or some other Hollywood gig, don’t overemphasize the whole self-mutilation thing, nor the psycho-violent aspect. Many very disturbed people don’t hurt themselves or anyone else.
Optimistic Nihilism Page 30