Stand by for some naive, hippie pseudo-philosophizing. Or some brilliantly piercing insights into the human psyche. Take your pick. I used to believe that life was something that happened to us: sometimes it would be kind, and we’d be happy, and sometimes it would be unkind, and we’d be depressed. Not being particularly quick on the uptake, it took a mere forty years or so for it to dawn on me that this was simply not the case. Yes, life happens to us, but our response to those experiences which are not actually tragic is largely up to us. And the overwhelming majority of our experiences are anything but tragic.
I’m always interested to know what people do to jerk themselves out of a crapulous funk into which they’ve sunk, either because they think life has let them down, or they think they’ve let themselves or others down.
Some go shopping. Some book a holiday. Some seek God’s help. Others go for a brisk walk or a bicycle ride. Many pick up a favourite book – anything from The Bible to P.G. Wodehouse - or listen to music (Gregorian chants to Heavy Metal) or head for a favourite art gallery. Some of us seek out trees or the seashore. Or look for a therapist, or write out a “To Do” list. There are always friends, of course, and family. For many, work is an escape (unless, of course, work is the cause of our current funk). Some prefer to shock themselves back into an appreciation of life by doing something dangerous. The more enlightened meditate. The desperate phone the Samaritans. The deluded self-medicate or get blind drunk.
Obviously it depends on how deep the funk is, what caused it, and what has proved efficacious in the past.
Now, I’m as inclined as the next chap to edge away from anyone who starts quoting “Desiderata” or Carlos Castaneda at me – but I suspect we all occasionally need something immediate to stop the internal cycle of gloomy thoughts that led to this enervating state in the first place, and which goes on feeding it. This doesn’t need to be the thing that ultimately lifts our mood – just something to temporarily halt whichever pattern of thinking has taken control of us, to give us an emotional breathing space to find the path – any path – back to reality.
The only thing that has consistently worked for me as a short-term fix while I sort myself out is the phrase, “This too shall pass”.
There are many versions of the basic story which concludes with this formula. Typically, a king asks his advisers for a phrase which will be true and appropriate on all occasions: his wise men eventually hand him a ring on which the words are inscribed.
I first became aware of the phrase while reading one of Idries Shah’s collections of stories demonstrating Sufic wisdom. It’s also part of Jewish folklore – usually associated with Solomon. The Victorian poet Edward Fitzgerald used it, and so did Abraham Lincoln. (I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that it has also served as the title of several pop songs.)
I’ve often employed “This too shall pass” during the past fifteen years to ease the deflation which inevitably follows hard on the heels of any sort of good luck or triumph (if, in fact, these are not the same thing). And, when I’ve suffered bad luck or disappointment, or behaved badly, it has often – if not always – helped me regain some measure of perspective.
By the way, I’m not arguing for relativism here, or for giving people an easy route to achieving a state of comforting self-delusion (“Yes, I commit crimes, but I’m still a worthwhile person” or “I know I’m two-timing my boy-friend, but it’s really his fault” or “Yes, I’m drinking a bottle of Scotch a day, but it’s just because I’m sensitive”). We often need to be hard on ourselves in order to stop doing what made us feel bad in the first place. Neither am I keen on the glib panaceas offered by NeuroLinguistic Programming: use positive words about yourself all the time and you’ll start to feel, like, you know, really positive about you. The problem is that maybe you shouldn’t feel positive about, like, you know, you, until you change your behaviour.
What I am saying is that many of us, when faced with setbacks or boredom, fall into familiar, unhelpful patterns of thinking which run like ancient river-beds through our psyches. What we need to do right away is to starve the river of water. That means halting our thoughts, albeit temporarily.
The French mystic, Simone Weil, brilliantly summed up the importance of being able to banish or ignore false, unhelpful, habitual thinking in this quote from that astonishing work, Gravity & Grace:
“The capacity to drive a thought away once and for all is the gateway to eternity. The infinite in an instant.”
Yes, how much human unhappiness that ability would prevent.
Meanwhile, “This too shall pass” acts – for me at least – as a helpful reminder that whatever I’m going through – whether good or bad – is temporary. It’s so simple, you’d think we would be born knowing the profound truth it encapsulates – but I, for one, certainly wasn’t.
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