Tag Archives: joy

The lost art of joy – Forgiveness

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Even suits like this can be forgiven …

Fun movie fact – The phrase “Revenge is a dish best served cold” was first said, in those exact words, in the Star Trek movie, Star Trek II, The Wrath of Kahn in 1982.

Revenge is one of the most classic of all movie plot lines. According to the Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Criminology, there are over 1000 catalogued films that are specifically “revenge” films. It sort of makes sense … imagine if the protagonist was decisively wronged, and instead of embarking on a convoluted scheme of vengeance, they just got on with their lives. Cue theme music, roll credits, yawn … not a particularly exciting movie.

And lets face it, we like movies with a theme of vengeance because no one likes being maligned or abused. It’s human nature to repay wrong with another wrong. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. If you hurt me, natural justice is fulfilled if I make you feel the same pain in return.

Revenge might make for a good movie plot, but does it make for a good life? As the old proverb goes, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” If you hurt me, hurting you back doesn’t make my pain go away. It just adds more pain to the world, because I’m still in pain and now you’re in pain. Then you’ll want to hurt me back, and the cycle escalates.

Francis Bacon said, “A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.” In other words, you may be able to bring about retribution, but during the process, you’ll end up keeping your own wounds open and festering, instead of letting them close and heal. It’s like someone cut you with a knife, and in order to show them what damage they did to you, you keep reopening the wound every few days. The wound may look open and fresh should they ever care to notice, but you’re the one who had to put up with an open wound for an extended time, and re-live the pain every time you reopened it.

Douglass Horton wrote, “While seeking revenge, dig two graves – one for yourself.” Vengeance rarely ends well.

Interestingly, research has shown how the desire for revenge can affect you mentally and physically. One study showed that when subjects were asked to think of reacting aggressively to a given scenario, parts of the limbic system in their brains increased in activity. This isn’t unsurprising, given that our brain subconsciously prepares us all the time for fight or flight responses when it starts to sense danger, in preparation for possible action.

What was more interesting is that angry rumination also reduced the activity of the subject’s frontal lobes as well, which is really important for reasoning. So it might be that reasoning is disrupted by anger, and that rehearsing angry and aggressive mental scenarios shuts down the brains problem solving approach and calm emotions.
The other alternative to nursing the grudge is forgiveness. Forgiveness is a particular form of acceptance. It’s the act of moving on from insult or injustice. It isn’t saying that what was done to you was ok, but rather, that you aren’t going to be held captive by it.
There have been lots of studies looking at different aspects of forgiveness, but without getting bogged down in details, forgiveness helps to rebalance things. People who forgive habitually tend to also have lower blood pressure, while individual acts of forgiveness and lower hostility predict lower stress levels, which in turn predicts lower self-reported illness. The reduction of negative affect (a “bad mood”) was the strongest mediator between forgiveness and physical health symptoms, although the study authors noted other variables such as spirituality, social skills, and lower stress also had a role in the forgiveness-health relationship.

Forgiveness is a complex psychological process, but it is primarily built on acceptance, another practical example of the serenity prayer. Forgiveness involves letting go of those things that can not be changed. You can’t change the past. Old wrongs will still be old wrongs, no matter what happens to the perpetrator in the future.

Like so many examples of acceptance, by letting go of the old hurts, you free up room for new joy. You’re no longer bound by the painful past, which means you can move forward into a joyous future. In this sense, think of revenge and forgiveness in terms of gifts. Specifically, those awful gifts that you accept under obligation from distant relatives. You know, stuff you might get from your great aunt, like a pair of festive Christmas crocs three sizes too small, or a Meowy Christmas suit and tie. Imagine your great aunt accidentally got the decimal place on the order form wrong and she sent you 1000 of them, making your house look like Santa’s workshop on acid.

Revenge would be keeping all 1000 pairs of Christmas crocs and Meowy Christmas suits in your house, waiting for the chance to show your great aunt what a terrible thing she did and how she’s filled your house with ugly Christmas-themed draff. Forgiveness is to send it all back to the manufacturer, every single last croc and tie, so that once again you have room for what’s important to you.

I don’t know if there is any one particular method to forgive. Apologies help, but they aren’t necessary to be able to forgive someone. Sometimes people find actually saying the words “I forgive you” to be a powerful release. That can be to a person directly, although that may not always go down so well. Saying it internally is valid. Sometimes writing it in a letter, and then tearing it up as an act of finality, can be useful.

This Christmas, if you’re hanging on to the festive crocs and Meowy suits of past hurts, let them go and fill your life with joy instead.

Post-script:

I understand that talking about forgiveness can bring up some deep and difficult feelings in some people. Just like physical wounds, some traumas are shallow and heal quickly, but others are inflicted so deep that they are hard to heal, like rape, childhood abuse, domestic violence and other deep psychological insults. It’s important to clarify here that memories of such traumatic events often intrude into your conscious awareness, where it takes over and replays in your memory. That’s different to unforgiveness and rumination, which are memories that we foster and encourage by actively rehearsing them. Forgiveness is still a part of the healing process of severe psychological trauma, but the healing process may take longer, and the process of finding that forgiveness may require a professional to help walk through the process. If you’ve been the victim of a severe trauma, you don’t need to go it alone. Find a psychologist or talk to your doctor if you’re not sure.

The lost art of joy – Loving yourself again

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How many doctors does it take to change a lightbulb?

That depends on whether it has health insurance.

None of the lightbulbs in my house have health insurance, but that’s not why I don’t like changing them. I’m just not the handy-man type, that likes to climb around on ladders, pulling off light covers, changing the bulbs and putting everything back together. It’s not that it’s particularly difficult, but unless all of the lightbulbs in a room are broken, I’m not going to go through all of the bother. I would much rather have lightbulbs that never die.

Of course, lightbulbs inevitably burn out. Some will work for an hour and then stop, others will last for years before finally giving out. An engineer who designed the light bulb would have an idea about how long the light bulb should work, and according to their tests, the light bulb would be expected to work for a certain time. For instance, say that I put a light bulb into my office lamp that is rated to last for 2500 hours, and it lasts for 2600 hours before it finally gives out. It’s lasted 100 hours longer than it’s rated for, and so to the engineer who designed it, the bulb is a success. But it’s still stopped working, and I’m in the dark. To me, it has still failed.

It’s interesting that failure is as much about the standards that people set, either individually or collectively, than anything else. My standards for light bulbs are probably unrealistic – I want them to work forever because I hate replacing them.

Sometimes we judge ourselves by an unrealistic standard, or we allow others to judge us by an unrealistic standard.

It’s easy to look at the people on magazine covers or on TV who look so perfect, and use that as our yardstick for self-comparison. We yearn for their perfect figure, or their talent, or their business acumen.

We compare ourselves to our ‘friends’ on social media and wonder why our lives aren’t as good.

We remember the criticism from our parents or our teachers – who wanted us to be skinnier, or smarter, or stronger – and strive to please them.

There’s nothing wrong with striving with the right motivation, but when our goal is unattainable or unrealistic, the energy we expend for no perceived gain just sucks the life from our soul, resulting in cognitive overload, resentment, anger and despair. None of these things helps us build joy in our lives.

The antidote is to love yourself again. We need to forgive ourselves and set goals that are realistic and attainable.

Setting realistic and attainable goals first comes from understanding our values and living by them, sailing in the direction that our particular breeze is taking us, not fighting against it.

We also need to understand our own capacity based on our own particular skills and talents. If you’re a Ferrari, you’re not going to be driving up rough mountain tracks, through rivers and around sand dunes. If you’re a Land Rover, you’re not going to be carving up a race track. Use the talents that you have to set your own course, not try to drive someone else’s.

It’s also ok to fail. We succeed because we fail. It’s ok to set some seemingly attainable goals and still not attain them. Beating yourself doesn’t help anyone, all it does is leave you bruised and bloodied. Love yourself even when you fail, and forgive yourself. Remember, “To forgive is to set a prisoner free, and discover that the prisoner was you.” (Lewis B. Smedes)

This Christmas, love yourself.  Don’t try to live up to the unrealistic standards of others, but set your own goals based on your values, even if you don’t always attain them.  And, forgive yourself. That will allow joy to flourish.

The lost art of joy – The freedom of now

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How do drive your car?

We all have our own particular styles – cautious, sedate, zippy, or kamikazi. There are some drivers that drive like a tortoise on tranquillisers. I always seem to get stuck behind them at traffic lights. I would describe my driving style as ‘confident’, though when I quickly nip around them at the lights, I’m sure they would think I’m in too much of a hurry.

Whether we’re on a perpetual Sunday drive or we go like a bat out of hell, there are some commonalities to how we all drive. No one drives the whole journey looking in the rearview mirror and no one crawls along in first gear all the way just in case there might be a red light or a stop sign up ahead. When we’re in control of our car, we drive according to the conditions around us at the time.

In the first two posts of this series, we looked at acceptance and values, or as the Serenity Prayer says, “give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.” Acceptance and values intersect in the present moment, the ‘now’.

We can’t change what has happened in the past, and we can’t control what is going to happen in our future. We can advance in the direction set by our values and embrace the freedom of living in the now.

Living in the now is just like driving. There’s no point looking in the rearview mirror the whole way. We can’t change the past. Getting lost in the if-only’s of the past means we don’t get to experience what is going on around us, and it effectively stops us moving forward because we’re looking the wrong way. We become stagnant and the lack of lack of forward progress makes it hard for joy to flourish. Neither can we control the future. Sometimes we allow the what-if’s of the inherently uncertain future to slow our progress and hold us back. We don’t know what’s around the bend, and after a while we prefer the familiarity of our rut.

When we move beyond the past and leave the future to our destiny, we can focus on the richness of the present moment. Living in the present moment is both liberating and invigorating – we are no longer being held captive by what has been or what might be, and we can allow our attention to absorb all of the plentiful and pleasing details that are going on all around us, every moment of our lives.

Living in the now is part of the practice of mindfulness. Mindfulness is a skill, and like every other skill, it takes some practice to get good at it. But the practice is worth it, as mindfulness is associated with higher levels of life satisfaction, agreeableness, conscientiousness, vitality, self esteem, empathy, sense of autonomy, competence, optimism, and pleasant affect.

There are many ways to practice mindfulness, but if you’re a novice, then a good place to start is through some apps like Smiling Mind or Headspace.  As you get better at living in the present moment, you will start to enjoy the richness and freedom that comes with it. If you start now, you won’t have to live haunted by the ghosts of Christmas-Past or Christmas-Future, but can have a marry and a mindful Christmas, living in the freedom of now.

The lost art of joy – Just what is joy?

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Robin Williams is my favourite all time comedian. At his best, his jokes would come flying out faster than what my brain could process them, but I still found myself laughing pre—cognitively and only understanding why I was laughing once my brain had a chance to catch up. He was famous for his talent for improvisational comedy, something he demonstrated one night for a group of budding actors, using nothing but a pink scarf.

And yet, despite being one of the funniest people in history, he was plagued by depression and drug abuse and died by suicide in 2014.

In an interview after his death, James Lipton poignantly described Robin Williams,

“In the end, Robin is Pagliacci. He is Pagliacci, the cliche of the clown who cries – that was there every single minute, every single minute of his life, and what he did was he spared us the hard part, and he gave us the joy. What an extraordinary gift that was.”

It’s hard to understand how someone can be so seemingly full of joy, or at the very least, give so much joy to others, and still be so plagued with melancholy and psychological pain. The life and death of Robin Williams certainly challenges our understanding of the true meaning of joy.

So it’s pertinent to ask: What is joy?

Is joy laughter? Is it pleasure? Is joy the same as happiness? Is joy the absence of sadness? Is it the absence of suffering? Is joy within us, or outside our control? The answer is probably a combination of all of these things.

My dictionary explains that joy is “a feeling of great pleasure and happiness”. The ancient Greeks considered that joy had two different parts – physical pleasures associated with biological needs, and feelings of higher pleasure. Physical pleasures, such as eating and sex, are known as ‘hedonia’ while the higher feelings of pleasure, associated with the appreciation of art, music, et cetera, as ‘eudaimonia’ (‘a life well lived’) after the distinction that Aristotle made in his writings on the subject.

Is joy the same as happiness or pleasure? C. S. Lewis didn’t think so, “I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again … I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and Pleasure often is.”

George Bernard Shaw considered joy to be something greater than oneself, “This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

It’s certainly true that depressed people can still laugh, and like Robin Williams, can make others laugh, so joy can certainly be both superficial and deep, and neither are mutually exclusive.

To add something else into the mix, the Christmas message of joy comes from the birth of the Saviour (Luke 2:10-12), so one of the Biblical meanings of joy stems from hope.

So the single definitive concept of true joy is elusive. Perhaps trying to define joy is like trying to define the ocean. We have all experienced the ocean and its beauty, and many of us have felt the coolness on our bodies as we have swam in it, or felt the awesome power of its currents and waves. Yet the ocean is so deep, so powerful and so mysterious that no one can ever truely comprehend it for itself.

We have all experienced the wonder and beauty of joy, although it is so deep, so powerful and so mysterious that no one can ever truely comprehend joy.

Not that it will every stop us from trying.

~~~
If you are struggling with mental illness and you need urgent assistance, please talk to someone straight away:

In Australia:
Lifeline ~ 13 11 14
BeyondBlue ~ 1300 22 4636 or https://www.beyondblue.org.au/about-us/contact-us
Suicide Callback Service ~ 1300 659 467 or https://www.suicidecallbackservice.org.au

USA:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline ~ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

New Zealand:
Lifeline Aotearoa 24/7 Helpline ~ 0800 543 354

UK:
Samaritans ~ 116 123

For other countries: Your Life Counts maintains a list of crisis services across a number of countries: http://www.yourlifecounts.org/need-help/crisis-lines.

The lost art of joy – Values

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“Wait … what are you doing?”

There’s a deep part of our consciousness that acts as our inner emergency brake. You know, when you’re about to call your boss a jerk, or drunk text someone, or post something narky on social media, there’s that little voice inside your head that says, “Uh, do you really think that’s a good idea?”

Thankful most of us don’t end up drunk-texting our boss and would never let ourselves get in a position to do so. Still, it’s a good idea every now and then to reevaluate our general day-to-day decisions, our routines and patterns, to say to ourselves, “Wait … what are you doing?”

Yesterday we talked about the Serenity Prayer – “grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other”. We talked about acceptance – accepting the things we can not change because fighting with things we can’t change wastes our energy and gets us nowhere. We can also waste a lot of energy and not get to where we want to go by using all our energy going to the wrong place – either we drift on autopilot, doing what we’ve always done because, you know, it’s what we’ve always done, or we can deliberately set sail in the wrong direction, thinking that we’re doing the right thing.

One way that we can build our joy is to live rich and meaningful lives in service of our values. In knowing our values, we can know ourselves, and engage in life in its fullness. ’Values’ can mean different things to different people, but in the Acceptance and Commitment framework, values refer to “Leading principles that can guide us and motivate us as we move through life”, “Our heart’s deepest desires: how we want to be, what we want to stand for and how we want to relate to the world around us.”

Values help define us, and living by our values is an ongoing process that never really reaches an end. Living according to your values is like sailing due west. No matter how far you travel, there is always further west you can go. While travelling west, there will be stops along the way, stopovers along our direction of travel like islands or reefs. These are like our goals in life.

The difference between goals and values is important. You could set yourself a whole list of different goals, and achieve every one of them, but not necessarily find meaning or fulfilment if they all go against the underlying values that you have. So goals are empty and unfulfilling if they aren’t undergirded by your deeper values.

How can you understand your values? There are a couple of ways. Ask yourself: “What do I find myself really passionate about? What things irk me? If I could do anything I wanted, and money was no object, what would I do?” Is there a recurrent theme running through your answers?

There are other ways to discover what your values are. Some people have suggested writing your own eulogy (the speech someone gives about you at your funeral). It sounds a bit morbid, and it’s only a figurative exercise, but it tends to sharply clarify what you want your life to be like. What do you want your legacy to be? Think about the things that you want to be known for at the end of your life, and see if there’s a word that best describes those desires.

Understanding our values can help us to navigate the seasonal madness without becoming overwhelmed. When you understand what’s truly important to you, it’s much easier to focus on what’s really important and say no to the things that aren’t. For example, Your boss invites you to exclusive Christmas drinks are her house, with some of the regional executives. It’s on at the same time as the Christmas Carols concert your sister is performing in. If your core values are career success, then the choice is easy. If you know your values are family first, then the choice is easy. You can make the choice that will bring you the most joy, and enrich your life.

So before the malaise of merriment takes hold, say to yourself, “Wait … what are you doing?” Ensure that what you’re doing is aligned with your deepest values to maximise your joy this Christmas season, and beyond.

The lost art of joy – Acceptance

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“’Tis the season to be jolly”

The auditory froth of tinny Christmas melody bubbled away in the background as I was trying to enjoy my sushi. I usually filter the incessant stream of Christmas carols from my consciousness as these days, they have become ever-increasingly cliche.

But once upon a time, Christmas carols were more than just shopping centre noise pollution. Once upon a time, Christmas carols had meaning. Even if you’re not inclined to celebrate the birth of the Saviour, there are still some Christmas themes we can all agree on, like peace on Earth, goodwill to all (women and) men, and joy to the world.

Joy. Christmas’s modern irony. In amongst the glitter and tinsel lies a season of despair for many people as the over-commercialised happiness hype and expectations of cheer amplify the sense of loneliness and pain that slowly abrades them. Then there’s the Yuletide exhaustion, the inevitable outcome of the frenetic push to shop, wrap, clean, decorate, travel to or host party after party after party – celebraters gonna celebrate! Joy is supposed to fit in your schedule or to-do list somewhere.

’Tis the season to be jolly? Yes, it is, but sometimes we work so hard to be joyful that joy itself has been lost along the way.

This year, with one thing or another, my writing has taken a bit of a backseat. I’m going to try and change that. I’m going to set myself a challenge to write one post a day for December celebrating the lost art of joy. What it’s going to look like is still anyone’s guess, with form and inspiration to be free and flowing. I’m not promising an exhaustive exposition … more a free-form exploration. Neither am I suggesting that I am an expert in such matters. I’m preaching to myself as much as anything. As someone who still battles depression, joy is often elusive to me.

Still, please come along for the ride. Together, let’s explore the many facets of one of the deepest of all emotions and how it’s an integral part of the Christmas season, and also our collective soul.

Many moons ago, I was a cub scout (which for those who don’t know, is Scouts for 8-10 year old boys). Once a week, we would get together and do outdoorsy type activities and games as part of learning about the seemingly antithetical values of teamwork and self-reliance, earning merit badges, dibbing and dobbing and all things scout.

One time I remember they divided the group into two and had us battle it out in a tug-o-war dual. Our parade area-come-battle zone was not particularly well lit, with the area just behind the scout hall in complete shadow, save for the occasional moonlight.

It was a gripping contest and during the battle, the other team managed to swing themselves around and pull their end of the rope into the inky darkness beside the scout hall. Our side doubled our effort, but despite what felt like an eternity of vigorous straining, we weren’t moving anywhere. We understood why when the other team started peeling away one by one and laughing at us – in the cover of darkness, they had managed to tie the tug-o-war rope to one of the poles supporting the balcony of the scout hall. We were struggling when we were fighting against human opposition, but we were clearly no chance at ever beating the scout hall in tug-o-war.

What do my #cubscoutfails have to do with joy? The scout hall tug-o-war episode is a good analogy for acceptance.

The self-help industry has, at one point or another, made us all want to better ourselves … which is fine, but only if what we wanted to change was actually changeable. By trying to change some part of us that is difficult to the point of being insurmountable, we expend huge amounts of energy to get nowhere. And it changes nothing, except for diminished motivation, volition and resistance to the thing we wanted to change in the first place. How many diets have ended in a flurry of ice-cream or Mars bars? We figuratively try to beat the scout hall in tug-o-war. The futile fighting with things that can not be changed makes it hard for joy to flourish.

The Serenity Prayer, made famous by Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs, is simple but profound. It starts by saying, “God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”

Accepting those things that can not be changed is life-changing! The frustration of constant failure destroys the soul and steals away any joy. It we want to protect our joy, we can start by accepting that there are things in life we can’t change. In the immortal words of that other modern ear worm – “let it go”. Don’t sweat and strain, heaving and pulling on something that can’t be moved.

Of course, acceptance isn’t the whole story, but the other aspects of the serenity prayer (wisdom and courage) might be topics for another day.

Suffice to say, picking our battles can make a profound difference to our life, and acceptance is the key to that.

Thanks for reading, and I hope we can talk more tomorrow.