How to
Become a Master of Life
Do you sometimes feel stressed and fed-up with life? Want to be
happy? Joyful? Well I wonder if joy really is the state to aim for... Is it even
possible?
When you think about it, intense happiness and joy are, by
their nature, short lived. Note the use of the words 'by their nature.' This
implies that you cannot artificially sustain joy, say by maintaining or
increasing the stimulus which produced it.
You know those Amazonian
insect-eating plants? Once an insect has triggered the plant to close, no amount
of further stimulation will have the slightest effect for several hours. You can
put that plant on a lead and take it for a walk through a swarm of flies, and
its lips will remain stubbornly sealed.
Our 'joy' mechanism is
similar.
Once triggered, it activates, and then a certain time period
must elapse before it can be triggered again. It is has filled its purpose; I
will explain what that is in a moment.
The same is true of intense
happiness. We feel this fleeting, wonderfully positive response when one of our
needs starts to be met.
Carefully note those last words.
I did not
say 'when one of our needs is fully met.' Joy or intense happiness is our reward
to ourselves for taking good care of the organism, just as pain is the
opposite.
Our NeedsWe have many needs,
as I am sure you know.
First in the hierarchy come our physical needs
(food, water, warmth, safety, shelter, sex, touch etc...). Many of these are
essential for our physical survival and so these become pressing if not met. We
feel intense and desperate pain (thirst, hunger, cold) and an intense joy at the
first sip of water, morsel of food or warmth of the blanket thrown around our
shoulders. But this quickly wears off because that need has now been satisfied.
More (or prolonged) warmth, more food or more water bring diminishing returns in
happiness.
Soon we pass into boredom and indifference about those needs.
We decline the third helping of swan's breast and wearily wave away the fifth
overflowing goblet of mead and... isn't it getting a little warm in here? Can
somebody please stop throwing peasants onto the fire...
Eventually, other
needs come to the surface - the need to be cool, the need to rest and digest.
Whereas before, the cold wind caused the most intense agony and you longed for a
good crackling fire to warm your bottom against, now the cold breeze from the
open window feels good against your face.
You feel a momentary flash of
joy...
How It All BeganIn mankind's
distant past, our physical needs were mostly all we took care of. Food, water,
shelter, sex, warmth - that was what it was all about.
Fast forward one
million years and many of us have cracked the 'physical needs' thing. Douglas
Adams described the three stages of man's evolution as "How shall we eat?" "What
shall we eat?" and "Where shall we do lunch?" Well, we're at the 'doing lunch'
stage now, at least in the Western world. For the main part we are all more than
adequately fed, watered and housed. Actually, this is a gross understatement -
we luxuriate in a massive surplus of these things.
But we are far more
than a collection of physical needs. We also have a whole range of intellectual
and emotional needs. We also have 'spiritual' needs in the sense of wanting
answers to "what's it all about?" questions and wanting to make sense of our
life as a whole and attain meaning.
Let's call these our ‘higher'
needs.
Higher NeedsExamples of 'higher
level' needs include our need for love, meaning, contribution, efficacy, beauty,
order, companionship, excitement, respect, authenticity, choice, trust, harmony
-- the list is a very long one (at least two dozen needs).
Which Are More Important?The temptation here is to
class these 'higher level' needs as less important than the lower level. In just
one way, they are.
Non-fulfilment of lower level needs often leads to
death - the actual extinction of the organism. Not filling higher level needs
rarely has this effect. But there, the difference ends.
The purpose of
life is not brute survival at any cost. The purpose is to survive as a man or
woman, with all that this implies. To both survive and to thrive. Thriving
requires that your higher level needs are also met. If they are not met, the
result will be misery, defeat, low self esteem and low energy.
If too
many of your needs are not met for a long period, the result will be depression
in all of its guises and possibly even psychosis or suicide. Yes, lack of water
will kill the organism called 'man' in a few days; but solitary confinement will
kill a man (not the organism but his spirit) in a few months.
Starvation
will kill a woman in two weeks; but total lack of love, warmth or affection will
kill a woman (not the organism but her spirit) in a few short years.
I do not
mean to imply that men and women have a different set of needs. They do not. All
humans share an identical set of needs.
The Cyclical Nature of
NeedsOur higher level needs are also cyclical. One example should
suffice.
We have a need for companionship - we are social creatures by
nature. This implies that our need for companionship is not optional. If we do
not fill this need we start to feel pain. So imagine now being in solitary
confinement (enforced or accidental).
After two or three days you feel
discomfort. As the days of solitude accrue, you feel more intense pain - the
pain of deep loneliness and the strong desire to see another human face or hear
a voice.
If this continues indefinitely, the result is depression and
even suicide. Can you possibly imagine that you might say: "Leave me alone! I
want to be by myself! I need my space!"? No, this seems inconceivable. But let
us see...
Suppose after months of confinement, you receive a visitor.
What intense joy! What rapture! You cling on to the person, greedily devouring
every line and wrinkle in their face; sucking up their words like a parched
traveler in a desert.
Too Much of a Good
Thing?Now imagine a second visitor and a third -
all friends and much loved family. Such happiness! You greet them all warmly.
Now a fourth and a fifth; soon fifty well-wishers and friends are crowded into
your room.
Hours pass, you start to feel weary. So many people, so much
talk. You start to long for some peace and quiet. But your guests have no
intention of going. They stay and stay - for hours, then days. They crowd your
bedroom whist you sleep, lovingly watching over you. They crowd your living room
whilst you are awake, cuddling you, kissing you, touching you - saying nice
things.
Gradually it becomes unbearable. You long for solitude. Your need
for companionship has been sated and your need for space and quiet is now
urgent. You scream out in pain: "Please! Will you all just GO AWAY! I want to be
alone! I need space!"
To dark mutterings of “Well! Of all the
ungrateful...” they stalk off into the night, leaving you with that which you
most need at present... solitude.
And so it goes on, round and round. You
could call this a 'cycle of needs.'
I like to imagine this as one of the
those Hi Fi volume meters made up of moving illuminated bars (like a bar
chart).
Each bar represents a need, the current level of the bar
indicating the intensity of that need at any one moment. They never stand still.
They dance up and down as each need is either met, or comes to the foreground
demanding to be met.
The further below the mid line a bar drops, the more
pain you feel. This triggers you into action to get that need met and hopefully
the bar comes up to midway - the object is to keep it there.
If it goes
above midway, you have overfilled that need (too much food, too much warmth, too
much companionship); this also causes pain and triggers you to further
action.
[Aside: Can you have too much of seemingly positive things like
love or harmony? Sure you can! Imagine a cloying, overbearing lover who will not
leave your side for one second and who strums lutes below your lighted window
each night - or a 100% harmonious world with never an argument, never a
disagreement, everything always being perfect.]
You could say that
everything you do in life is a strategy for keeping those bars all in a line, in
the middle. Often our strategies are misguided and even counterproductive, but
still the intention is to fill a need.
No Final ResultOf course
this is a dynamic thing, like juggling. It is never static.
There is
never a time - not once in your entire life - where you can sit back and admire
your straight line of bars, secure in the knowledge that they will remain that
way for longer than a few moments.
A juggler can never relax her
concentration and have the balls remain in a perfect arc above her head. And
here's the really important bit: even when those bars are in a line, it does not
produce joy or ecstatic happiness. These, as we have seen, are our brief reward
for starting to fill an urgent, chronic need.
So what do you think is the
emotion corresponding to a full set of well-filled
needs?
Contentment.
Now we are getting closer to a sustainable and
desirable state to aim for.
Everyone thinks they want to be blissfully
happy, (in this particular article I am using this word in the sense of intense
happiness bordering on joy.) In fact, this is unsustainable by any means - just
as the fly trap cannot munch its way through an endless queue of suicidal
bluebottles. It is not in the nature of the plant to do this. It is not in our
nature to feel constant joy.
This is such an important point that I want
you to be very clear about it. As an organism, it is not the case that our
purpose is to move towards a state of permanent intense happiness (joy), any
more than the juggler aims to attain a perfect frozen arc of equally-spaced
balls above her head so that she might relax, arms folded.
So what is our purpose?It is to maintain a state of
dynamic equilibrium - neither too hot, nor too cold; neither too tired, nor
over-rested; neither starving, nor bloated.
To achieve this, evolution
has provided us with two important feelings: pain and pleasure. Pain is the
stick, goading us away from danger, chronic lack, or massive excess. Pleasure is
the carrot, enticing us to act in a way that gets it just right - perfectly
balanced. Both have the purpose of getting us to act - to do something to
restore equilibrium.
Once equilibrium has been achieved, the feeling is
not one of intense, prolonged happiness (that is our reward for starting to fill
a much neglected need.) The result is equilibrium for the organism and we
experience this as a quality of contentment.
Become a
Master Juggler of LifeIf we become a master juggler of life and
get the hang of keeping those tricky bars all in a row, or balls in the air, our
reward is deep and lasting contentment.
Since words have many meanings,
let me be a little more specific about this state. You feel that all is right
with your world (which, of course, it is). You feel calm, in flow, certain, in
focus, open, poised, sensitive and clear.
Other people will feel a very
special quality about you and want to be close to it - they crave it too, just
as every human being does. Life seems easy for you. You wonder why on earth you
struggled and strained for so many years, wracked by guilt, angst, pain and
unhappiness.
The reason is that you were not, at that point, a master of
life.
To push the juggler analogy a teensy bit further; top jugglers like
Brad Byers spend years learning exactly how to keep all of those balls or clubs
flying in an arc above his head. I imagine that at times it seemed impossible;
he felt like giving up. He was probably often frustrated, angry and despairing
about ever being able to do such a difficult thing. But having mastered it, the
process now is almost effortless for him. When juggling, he is in a 'flow' state
- not struggling, sweating and striving to maintain the arc, but calm, certain,
almost in a meditative state.
Happiness Is Not
NaturalIs contentment the 'natural' human state?
Well,
that depends on what you mean by 'natural.' Our default condition is not one of
contentment.
It is entirely incorrect to say that if you do nothing, let
go or drop out then you will default to a 'natural' state of contentment. The
exact opposite is true, in fact.
If you seek contentment you are required to
engage in a constant, relentless struggle with nature and reality (required by
your essential nature, that is).
Disengaging with this struggle, as you
might expect, rapidly produces discontentment closely followed by unhappiness,
pain and then death. All the balls come tumbling to the ground and the audience
holds it breath, wondering if this is a joke or whether they are witnessing a
disaster.
Books, courses and religions which claim that man's 'natural'
state is one of happiness are just plain wrong - as wrong as a book on juggling
which claims that the balls 'naturally' want to be in a neat arc and that your
task as a juggler is to 'get in touch' with this natural state and 'release' the
balls to 'do their own thing'...
Mankind's 'natural' state is one of
constant struggle to maintain equilibrium. His reward for this, if he masters
it, is contentment.
Does all this talk about 'constant struggle' put you
off? Perhaps you are thinking that happiness and even contentment are now well
out of your reach?
Not so.
Just because you are engaged in a
lifelong 'dance' with nature, does not mean that it is arduous, deeply painful
and harsh - although it can be these things if you get it wrong. The truth is
that it is possible to be content because our needs are not that difficult to
meet, particularly these days. Not easy, but not that hard either.
The reason
we feel such discontent, pain, unhappiness and angst is mainly because of false
information leading to erroneous and completely incorrect strategies for filling
our needs.
How to Become A Master of Life
Let's summarise the important things I have been explaining
to you:
1. You have many needs, both 'lower level' (e.g. food) and
'higher level' (e.g. love).
2. Your needs are the 'voice' of the organism
called a 'human being' telling you what it needs for survival as a human (not
survival at any level, e.g. as a cringing, naked half-starved beast.)
3.
Your needs are never filled, finally, for all time. They are cyclical. Your two
dozen (or so) needs cycle round and around. At any one moment, several are
urgently screaming at you, a few are muttering for attention and others are
satisfied - for now.
4. When a need is not filled, you feel discomfort
and then pain. This is the human organism's method of alerting the higher part
of your mind (the strategy part) to come up with some plans, pronto, for filling
that need.
5. If a need has been unfilled for a long time, when you
attend to it you feel a burst of an emotion we call 'joy.' This is your instant
reward for getting started. It is not a sustainable feeling.
6.
Gradually, as you master how to juggle your needs and respond to them in a
timely fashion, your reward is a feeling we call 'contentment.'
7. The
trick is to become a 'master of life' - a master juggler. This is not a
'natural' state. You need to work at it and practice it. You also need an
instructor. (If you have ever tried your hand at juggling, you will know it is
impossible to learn, by yourself, from first principles. But if someone shows
you the step-by-step method, then anyone can learn to juggle three balls in
around five hours. Five balls? Come back in five years!)
In case you have
not yet realised this fact, it is going to take time for you to become a ‘master
of life'.
A good time to start is... now.
