Journaling project, Day 26

[drwex]

A tiny part of your life is decided by uncontrollable circumstances, while the vast majority of it is decided by your perspective of these circumstances. Let this sink in. Regardless of what’s going on around you, peace of mind arrives the moment you come to peace with what’s on your mind.

What is one reality you need to come to peace with? Why?

In the original prompt there's a link to this: http://www.marcandangel.com/2018/06/10/3-hard-perspective-shifts-that-will-gradually-make-your-life-3-times-easier/ - an article that falls squarely in the "if you just think right thoughts then you'll realize things are OK" camp. Where's my blowtorch?

I mean, sure. I'll buy that gratitude is an important part of mental health. Expressing things you are grateful for, and expressing gratitude to other people, has been shown to have a positive effect on outlook. But then again, so does doing good works, or making a meaningful social connections. Focusing on one of these over the others seems like... well, slanted BS. Gratitude isn't magic, it's part of a holistic mental health regime, at most.

And yes, I agree that it's destructive to fixate on fantasies about how things should be and unrealistic self-negation for not obtaining these fantasies is definitely detrimental. And so on and so on. It's not that I disagree with the underlying attitude (*) - it's that I disagree that perspective is the "vast majority" of peace of mind. As I said above, I think for me it's the difference between a holistic approach to mental health that reduces negative habits (fixation, self-negation), increases positive ones (mindfulness, gratitude, etc.) but that also incorporates other elements of lifestyle. Healthy eating, proper exercise and sleep, attention to relationships with other people such as building your social network and integrating well with your work teams... Et cetera. I don't think any one of these is a silver bullet nor can I subscribe to any "vast majority" assertion.

I worry that an approach that says "you should be thinking happy thoughts" negates peoples' needs to process and experience their lives. In one example from the link above, a family who lost everything in a fire is cited. If they are able to be happy about their situation then great for them. But there's also a well-understood set of negative effects that come when people do not properly express or work through negative emotions. Grief at such a major loss, anxiety and worry about a suddenly uncertain future - those seem like normal and healthy responses to a major negative life event. Telling these people, or really anyone, that all they need to do is think happy thoughts and that's the "vast majority" of what's going on seems to me like a prescription for unrealistic response that can be long-term harmful.

Me personally - I tend to think of myself as a reality-based individual. Some people tell me that leads to me being overly negative. If anything, then, my problem is the opposite of the challenge posed here.

I'm away Thu/Fri so the next update (and maybe

(*) Except again it hides the underlying assumption that we can somehow (magically?) tell the difference between mentally harmful fantasies that we'll never obtain and hard goals that we should get motivated to achieve. If you've got a reliable formula for telling those two apart, please share it.

Comments

[reedrover]

if you just think right thoughts then you'll realize things are OK

What's the Stella line? "No amount of smiling brightly will turn that flight of stairs into a ramp."

[elusiveat]

Wow. That's a really cruddy prompt. I got as far as:

A tiny part of your life is decided by uncontrollable circumstances, while...

And thought: "Wait. What. No. What."

Good job responding with dignity to such a bizarre prompt.

[drwex]

Yeah I kind of had to grit my teeth on this one but I think it's a good exercise for me to carry through on this project and not skip steps.

[chhotii]

OK so I just figured out why I don't like this series of writing prompts that you've been working through.

Whoever wrote these prompts seems to believe in the magical power of positive thinking. For a good take-down of the destructive harmfulness of this belief, you have got to read Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America by Barbara Ehrenreich. (MUST read. It's a short book, a quick read, and I will loan it to you.)

Now, that said, there is something to be said for being about to recognize the positive aspects of how something turned out. Yes the house burned down, but yay nobody was hurt. Yes this woman was hurt in a car accident, but yay her loved ones were fine.

However the current political situation is like an accident or fire or terrorist attack that's still in progress. It's like a four-year slow-motion train wreck. God, I hope only four years, but that's the point: we don't know until it's over. And we don't know how bad the damage is, and what will be spared, until it's over. The past two years have been like... how I felt in the middle of the day on 9/11, but all the time, not for a day or a couple of weeks but for years. We can "look at the positive side": Yay, at least they are not sending people like us to concentration camps! But, there's a path from where we are now to there, and, are we on that path? So, too early to celebrate "things could've been worse".

The bright side of the current political situation might turn out to be that people are so outraged, they elect lots of good progressives. Perhaps Obamacare will be wrecked but then a bunch of socialists will ride in on a wave of fury, say "screw compromise", and erect single-payer healthcare in it place. But I'm afraid to be optimistic. Maybe we are in a positive feedback loop of Republicans successfully stealing elections thus solidifying their power to suppress the black/urban/liberal etc. vote and thus stealing more elections.

I'm holding my breath waiting to see how this comes out. Election day is in just 3 more months... Will the Democrats have the power to clip Trump's wings in the next Congress, or will hate have a decisive mandate?

This makes it a really really bad time to engage with this particular prompt.

[drwex]

I like Ehrenreich generally. I will take the loaner but I'm reading books slowly these days.

I think you raise a valid point that "coming to peace with" can be a synonym for "accepting" even what one might have considered unacceptable. Like, no. Just no.

[flexagon]

I disagree that perspective is the "vast majority" of peace of mind.

I've read a LOT of books on happiness, and it's kind of stunning how little of it seems to correspond to external circumstances. Give us a lottery win or an amputated limb, we return to the same happiness set point over and over within a year or so. Usually the number bandied about is that 10% of happiness actually depends on external circumstance and the other 90% is (ulp) internal.

Maybe you're drawing a distinction between "happiness" and "peace of mind", or some other nuance, but the science of well-being appears to be against you on first reading.

[drwex]

I have read some of the (popular reporting of them) science on base level happiness. People do seem to return to their base level, over a period of time. But I think there's a difference between happiness, base level or overall, and the general notion of peace of mind, which is what the prompt seems to be addressing.

I think there's at least middling science to back up my view that there is no single determinant of peace of mind. That a great many factors go into it and privileging one over all the others seems like an error. I do not think the science is against me, but if you'd like to point me at some I'm open to it.

[flexagon]

OK -- you're drawing a distinction between "happiness" and "peace of mind", so I withdraw my comment.

[mizarchivist]

I do agree that this article, that I skimmed so I could get the gist of it, fails to have the nuance.
We are not supposed to be happy all the time. It's not reasonable or realistic. Feelings that are quantified as "negative" (anger, sadness, anxiety, grief, anger, envy)-- if left to fester, sure, can be bad for you, but also I am working on the idea that those feelings are telling us something, too. Something that's unresolved, important, whatever. I think there's something to be said for being able to feel the feelings without berating yourself for feeling them. I'm working on it. I haven't figured out how to do that yet, quite frankly. That being disappointed or frustrated in something indicates lack of being grateful or indication of being too selfish. The belief that all selfishness is actually bad. Ugh.
"What you call a fantasy I call a plan" says the shirt. I think we both have experienced things in our lives that other folks would look at agog. "YOU DID WHAT???" Yeah, that's our Friday night, what of it? Some fantasies are unrealistic, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy them as long as you know it's Just A Fantasy. Some fantasies are possible if you re-evaluate your assumptions and willingness to work for them. Also sometimes you can get a partial success rate on a fantasy and be happy with that. Figure out what you can do that meets that need. Needs are needs!
I think the problems come when we get stuck and can't see our way clear to do meaningful, healthy, and rewarding activities with the resources we do have, whatever they happen to be. When it's been X years and we're still hung up on Y with no sense of change or agency to affect change. And sometimes we're just gonna be mad at someone forever, that doesn't mean you have to stay in a dark room and be mad. it can occupy a square in your brain of the "I'm mad at them" but keep doing YOUR thing.
uhhhh right. OK. Your friendly neighborhood archivist is VERY Thinky and VERY well caffeinated. <3

[drwex]

there's something to be said for being able to feel the feelings without berating yourself for feeling them

Indeed. Self-honesty if nothing else.

That being disappointed or frustrated in something indicates lack of being grateful or indication of being too selfish. The belief that all selfishness is actually bad. Ugh.

Yeah, that's another of those tricky boundary-drawing lines. You'll see me complain about these throughout the writing prompt responses where it feels like the prompt presumes I have a magical ability to know "good" selfishness (self-care, healthy boundaries) from "bad" selfishness. I don't have a crystal ball for that sort of thing. Good fantasy from bad fantasy, or bad fantasy from aspirational goal. I mean, I recognize that there IS a difference, but I can't give a hard and fast rule for splitting them up.

Your friendly neighborhood archivist is VERY Thinky and VERY well caffeinated. <3

And very loved. <3

[totient]

I see a lot of conflation in the world, and especially in what for lack of a better term I'll call the Western Buddhist community, between acceptance and acquiescence. You can't make progress on anything if you're in denial about it. But accepting that something is true is not the same as saying it's OK. Being with a truth can and often should be a call to arms.

[flexagon]

I agree with this. I think a person can accept something without being resigned to it being true forever, and while also still resisting it.