Karma-just the way things work

In Buddhism, dharma has many meanings but at its simplest level, dharma is just the way things work.  When through experience, suffering, and observation, you gain genuine insight into how the world really works, in that moment you are an awakened one.

Why we are fooled about life

The problem is, on the face of it, it may not be so obvious how the world really works.  We may, for example, believe (and our experience may tell us) that the only way to get ahead in the world is through being ruthless and putting our own interests above all others’.  We may believe progress depends on who we know and what connections we have.  And again, our experience may seem to confirm that this is so. After all, look at so-and-so, that’s exactly how she got ahead in the world.

What we have is a kindergarten sense of cause and effect that is extremely narrow in its scope,  We have blinders on and are only focusing on immediate effects of actions, not long-term consequences.  In Buddhism, karma, the law of cause and effect, runs wide and deep. It always asks, what thoughts and actions lead to lasting happiness and what don’t?

Karma in a nutshell

A scientific understanding of karma has two parts.  First, we are fully convinced that our actions always have results.  Not sometimes, always! Seems obvious, but how often do we do something we know is wrong or injurious and yet deceive ourselves into thinking it doesn’t matter or can’t really affect us or others.

Second, understanding karma means we are fully convinced that we are fully responsible for our actions.  Not partly, but fully! Whatever outside pressures and circumstances we may face, the choices we are ours.  We own them, and in a sense, they own us.  Our choices and decisions, good or bad, largely determine our happiness or suffering.

Karma – you’re in it for the long run

Of course, the decisions and choices of others also greatly affect our experience, but in the long-run—and Buddhism is all about long-term, lasting happiness—the one thing we do have control over is our own choices.  As Viktor Frankl notes, it’s our last great freedom, something even a prison-camp can’t take from us.

The more we can live our lives honestly and courageously—making better and better choices and taking responsibility for and learning from the results of those choices, the happier we will be. The dharma really is that simple, and you don’t have to be a Buddhist to practice this path.

Owning our lives – the Noble Way to live

Living the dharma is really a matter of understanding, “I own my life.  I own my choices.  I own and accept the results of my choices.”  If we don’t understand this, we abdicate our dignity as human beings. We become little more than mindless corks bobbing on a sea of forces we can barely comprehend.

So, take heart!  The very laws of the universe can help us, when we understand them.  The Buddha’s dharma speaks to the nobility in each of us—our innate capacity to choose right and reject wrong.  This nobility leads to a truly noble path that can take us all the way to the limitless freedom of an awakened mind and heart.

See also:

Karma—It’s not fate!

Patagonia’s Yvon Chouinard: One of America’s Best Leaders : TreeHugger:

Yvon knows about risk. Both personal (climber, skier, white water paddler, surfer). And corporate. In 1972 Yvon told rockclimbers there was a more environmentally sound way to protect themselves on rock routes that didn’t require bashing metal pitons in and out of the rock. At that time he was making his money selling pitons.

Between Steve Jobs and Yvon Chouinard, who would you rather work for?

I’d vote Chouinard.

Hell, he might even teach me how to surf. (Well, I did write a whole paper on Patagonia once.)

Why? Because Chouinard’s business was built from trying to fund a hobby. And I learnt in Australia that I don’t really need the computer; the great outdoors was a lot more fun – even if yes, I am very timid to begin with but I learnt more about myself from traversing that one un-maintained trail in Cradle Mountain than I ever did in all my time in Singapore.

I remember the rangers telling me that it’s not advisable that I try. It was very scary. But I regretted not going forward even though yes, I was alone and for the first time, really worried about death and what my family would possibly think because the trail had almost invisible markers due to dilapidation and I’d gone as far as I could visibly spot the markers. There was no visible trail where I turned back.

It was also snake mating season then. Maybe one day I can go back. Better with a couple of friends, too.

I think amongst all the guys I’d met there – Scottish, Swedish, German (one of each) – I was the most timid. All I did, was to buy a ticket to board the ship and everything else was planned impromptu from there. I didn’t even know about the public transport in Tasmania until I boarded the ship. I merely knew that I wanted to be in Tasmania. And that was reason enough.

It was an extremely valuable experience, which, unfortunately, I do think Singaporeans will think me mad for it.

To date thus, I have no personal heroes amongst Singaporeans. Though that’s more to do with having a PAP-loving parent.

Don’t you think the Australian Government does international students a great disservice by forbidding them to skip classes? How can anyone get to really know Australia just by being in class when the coolest Aussie kids all take mid-term breaks to the wilderness at the drop of a hat?

Surely if they overlooked that a little, there’d have been more foreign investment for HECS? It’s not like they turned into drug mules and did cocaine or bashed someone up.

That’s the whole sheer importance of having friends: Sometimes you stand up for them (with your intellectual middle finger); sometimes, especially if you’re physically inept, you hide behind them.

“Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.”

Daniel J. Boorstin

“Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.”

Albert Einstein

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds. Won’t you help to sing the songs of freedom?”

Bob Marley

“I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have. For example, the freedom of thought. Instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation.”

Søren Kierkegaard

“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”

Benjamin Franklin

“Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.”

Moshe Dayan

“We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”

Edward R. Murrow

“Everything can be taken from a man but … the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Viktor Frankl

I had originally intended to write about a different lesson at this point in the journey. Even though I had written quite a lot, it wasn’t coming together and feeling ready to share. I sat with that for a few days, and during a time of contemplation and reflection, the word freedom loomed large in my awareness (!), and I knew I needed to write about this first.

That was a key right there, having the freedom to change and adapt. Yes that touches on a couple of previous lessons, like flexibility and choice, as it should. All these lessons I am writing about are interrelated, an interconnected weave that makes life all the better!

OK, back to my chosen word for this lesson – freedom.

Sometimes it takes the most challenging situations to truly learn how free we really are. Viktor Frankl’s quote above and his experiences demonstrate, perhaps better than anyone, how free one can be, even in the most dire circumstance. Viktor Frankl survived imprisonment at Auschwitz during World War II. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, he wrote about his experiences there and found inner freedom, which is a powerful teaching. He also had recognition that, rather than our driving force in life being sex and desire (as Freud believed), we are driven more by purpose and meaning as our deepest desire. I concur! But I digress.

I am grateful that I have not had the journey that Viktor had (I certainly appreciate what he went through, and the teaching he brings!). In my far less extreme, yet interesting journey of house-sitting(!), I have learned there is an innate sense of freedom I have on many levels, not least of which is my attitude and choice of how I respond, independent of situation or circumstance. Thank you, Viktor, for your incredible example.

Looking back over the last sixteen months of my house-sitting experiences, I have really experienced an amazing amount of freedom, not just in physical locale (which has been quite an expansive opportunity in itself!), but definitely in my daily experience, feelings and thinking. This experience has afforded me a different, perhaps higher perspective from which to view life, and the choices I make. Yes, there is the obvious freedom of lower overheads – no rent, no utility bills, no upkeep. Yet beyond the surface freedoms, there are some powerful openings of freedom on deeper and more innate levels. I have less attachment to things like a perfect place to stay, or specific luxuries. I have preferences, don’t get me wrong, however, I find I am more free and adaptable in the different places I have stayed, which include air mattresses and bunk beds (careful to look before rising from bed!).

Freedom is one of those weighted words that many misunderstand or they limit in its use (limiting freedom, isn’t that an oxymoron?!). Yes, on the grand scale, in good conscience, we desire to free the slaves, free the oppressed, free the victims from the controllers, etc. Not to belittle these very real concerns, however, look at freedom from the inside out, rather than from the outside in (in the macro, so in the micro, so to speak). How so?

Edward R. Murrow quote above speaks to this in my interpretation, with a couple of substitutions – “We cannot defend freedom outside ourselves by deserting it within ourselves.”

How are you choosing to enslave yourself to the rules, to outside structures, or even to other people’s voices? Are you victim to your own habits, addictions, feelings, needs and wants? Do you find yourself in situations that oppress you?

If we don’t unshackle our own chains first, we will only limit ourselves trying to help others. Their entrapment will simply trigger and confine us. However, when we have freed ourselves from our own limited perceptions, then we can positively serve and free others. For example, if an alcoholic overcomes his or her addictive patterns, he or she can be a powerful role model and guide to others who are in the same or similar situations.

Before we can effectively and truly free anyone else from slavery, oppression or victimization, we must, absolutely, get free from the self-imposed and self-created limits that we put in front of ourselves like some bizarre form of Olympic hurdles!

Speaking of the Olympics, and as an example, as a human race we have found freedom within an apparent limitation. How so? Gravity! Gravity is a trap if we look at it from the point of view of not being as mobile and light as we want, or more readily feeling frustrated and angry because of obesity or simply being overweight. Yet, for many, when we cannot escape this apparent limitation, we accept it, and actually learn to play with it, and in that we claim our freedom! Ever used a skipping rope, a pogo stick, or a swing? There’s even a worldwide phenomenon that happens every four years and involves all manner of gravity defying activities called the Olympic Games. I know that’s a long way to make a point, however truth is, all these, and more, are powerful ways we express freedom in the face of gravity! We find freedom even in the structure of limitation. Apply that to some other areas of your life! What inner limits have you placed on yourself, from self-talk, from others’ influence, from societies rules and laws? Time to embrace a little freedom I reckon!

Many of us have experienced a dark or challenging time in our lives, known perhaps as a dark night of the soul in spiritual circles, a mid-life crisis in polite society, or depression in other circles. Whatever it may be called, it is most often a paradigm shift of world reality that is being birthed, and knowing this before or during the experience is a powerful opening to freedom.

I liken this experience to the caterpillar in the cocoon, where the old has dissolved and the new has yet to manifest. It’s called Caterpillar Soup (thank you Lyena Strelkoff for your capturing that phrase). It can be a time of peace, at one end of the spectrum, or at the other end of the scale, a time of pure panic!

To quote Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy – DON’T PANIC! Getting back to the butterfly, or rather the caterpillar in this stage(!), the caterpillar goes through a transmutation of its form to become the butterfly. It has to totally let go for that transformation to occur, in which there is freedom rather than control or constriction. When the butterfly is ready to emerge fully formed from its cocoon and gain it’s freedom, it must do it alone. The action of pushing itself from the cocoon is the pumping mechanism that pumps into its wings so it may fly. If we interfere with this process, we doom the butterfly to a short limited existence and death. Freedom is not something we can give another, truly. It is something we can experience and claim for ourselves, and cheer another on in their quest for freedom.

My intention is to save you challenges or unnecessary problems, life experiences or traumas. My wish is for you to gain more freedom and joy in life, independent of what life may be bringing you – ultimately turning lemons into lemonade if that’s what life presents to you! And of course, if you need assistance, I bring a powerful set of coaching tools to your aid!

Be inspired!

PB&J
Barry.

* Again, the continued journey of house-sitting and couch-surfing moves forward, and the count increases, so now it rests (for the moment) at 41 places in 16 months. I continue to be so grateful for the support of friends and friends of friends, and am welcoming my next residence immediately!!

At the heart of Buddhist teaching and practice is the great truth that every individual has the innate capacity to change for the better—to make decisions and choices that lead to the end of suffering and to lasting happiness.

Each step on the Noble Eightfold Path — right view, right aspiration, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration — is a step that presupposes the human being’s freewill and ability to make right choices.

Few people have written more movingly or authoritatively on this innate freedom to choose than Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl.  Life in a Nazi prison camp was truly a hell realm. And yet, in the very midst of that living hell, Frankl saw a freedom that can never be taken from us.

When we are struggling in own personal prisons and hell-realms, Frankl’s words can inspire us not to give up.  We can remember that we can choose how we respond in even the worst circumstances.  And in that very choice, we find the dignity of a Buddha.

On Choice & Dignity

Viktor Frankl

“I may give the impression that the human being is completely and unavoidably influenced by his surroundings. (In this case the surroundings being the unique structure of camp life, which forced the prisoner to conform his conduct to a certain set pattern.) But what about human liberty?

“Is there no spiritual freedom in regard to behavior and reaction to any given surroundings? Is that theory true which would have us believe that man is no more than a product of many conditional and environmental factors-be they of a biological, psychological or sociological nature? Is man but an accidental product of these? Most important, do the prisoners’ reactions to the singular world of the concentration camp prove that man cannot escape the influences of his surroundings? Does man have no choice of action in the face of such circumstances?

“We can answer these questions from experience as well as on principle. The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.

The Last Human Freedom

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

“And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.

“Seen from this point of view, the mental reactions of the inmates of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere expression of certain physical and sociological conditions. Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.”

Viktor Frankl

“I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare. … I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, … At that moment, I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him.”

Under the dire circumstances of the concentration camps, Frankl became fully convinced that if life is to have meaning, there must be meaning in death and sufferings also, and that every day, every moment, in every situation, no matter how dreadful and seemingly hopeless, a human being still can live with dignity and meaning, he always has the freedom to choose to be responsible for his life, to love, to experience life in its fullness even through sufferings.

En man berättade en gång för mig, jag vet inte om det är sant eller ej, att i USA så har man börjat gå till filosofer istället för till psykologer. Enligt honom skulle de vara båda billigare och bättre lämpade för lösningarna på patienternas problem.

Den österrikiske psykologen Viktor Frankl utgör en brygga mellan de båda vetenskaperna. Hans bidrag, Logoterapin (logo = mening), vill hjälpa patienten att finna en djupare livsmening snarare än att bota olycka eller undvika smärta.

”Livet måste ha mening” tar sin avstamp i de nazistiska koncentrationslägren där juden Frankl under fasansfulla umbäranden satt fången i tre år. Boken påminner i sin stil mycket om Dostojevskijs ”Döda huset”, vilken behandlade den ryska författarens tid i ett sibiriskt tukthus.

Liksom sin föregångare har Frankl den inre psykologin hos fångarna som primärt fokus. Alla hemskheter runt omkring berättas för att förstå hur de tänkte. Den här analytiska stilen gör det lättare för läsaren att hålla distansen. (Men inte alltid. Som när Frankl säger till sin kamrat strax innan han tror att han ska dö, att om kamraten överlever så ska han finna Frankls 24-åriga hustru och säga henne att han älskat henne mer än någon annan, och att inte ens alla umbäranden han de senaste åren har varit med om, har övervägt lyckan att få ha spenderat tid med henne.)

Bara en av tjugo fångar i koncentrationslägren överlevde. Frankl har funderat över varför just han var en av dem. Han menar att av oerhörd vikt var att han tidigt bestämt sig för att i minnet återställa ett manuskript som han tvingats lämna ifrån sig. Det var hans nödlina han klängde sig fast på. Trodde man inte på sin framtid, menar Frankl, så var man förlorad. I och med sina tankar på sin fru och sitt manuskript hade han en framtid och något att leva för. Han beskriver hur de fångar som tappade den här tron dukade under på bara några dagar.

En annan viktig anledning att han överlevde, menar Frankl, var att han tog på sig sitt lidande. Att när en människa öppnar upp sig för sitt lidande på allvar, när hon tar på sig ”sitt kors”, kommer hon se en mängd möjligheter även i de svåraste situationer. Det är i det här ljuset, menar Frankl, som man ska se Nietzsches citat ’det som inte dödar mig gör mig starkare’.

Frankl var religiös. I motsats till Sartre så trodde han inte att det är upp till oss människor att skapa meningen med livet – eller att ’skapa vår egen essens’ som Sartre uttrycker det. Han menar istället att det är upp till oss att upptäcka vad vår uppgift i livet är.

  Men man bör inte söka en absolut sanning. Det finns inget svar på den generella frågan: – Vad är meningen med livet? Varje människa har olika uppgifter inför livet, menar han, och den är olika för varje människa och kan också vara olika från dag till dag. Jag tror att jag har uppfattat Frankl rätt när jag säger att det enligt hans filosofi inte nog går att poängtera vikten av att se hur varje människa är oersättlig. Hon är unik och för hennes uppdrag (hennes livsmening) finns det ingen som kan ta hennes plats.

Frankl skriver att vårt moderna samhälle har gett oss en frihet med våra liv som ifall den inte backas upp av en djupare mening leder till olycka. Nutidsmänniskan förtärs i sin själsliga tomhet. Grundproblemet, menar han, är att vi tror att lösningen ligger inom oss själva.

”Varje tid har sin kollektiva neuros. Det existentiella vakuum som är vår tids massneuros, kan beskrivas som en personlighetsform av nihilism.”

Här vill Frankl med sin logoterapi (logo = mening) vara en motkraft. Enligt honom så ska meningen med livet inte sökas i människans eget psyke utan ute i världen. Självförverkligandet, menar Frankl, låter sig inte uppnås som ett mål i sig själv.

Eller enklare uttryckt: släng självhjälpsböckerna och gå istället ut i och gör något konkret för att förbättra världen. Att ta sig an denna uppgift, sin mening med livet, kräver stort ansvar. Det är vad Frankl vill åt i vad han kallar för ”Logoterapins imperativ:

”Lev som du levde för andra gången och som om du första gången hade handlat så galet som du håller på att handla nu.”

Después de leer el comentario de Claudia a mi entrada anterior, acabé por decidirme a escribir sobre este tema.

El título de  esta entrega (Después del impacto) corresponde al libro de Jessie Gruman, Ph. D.

Tenía la inquietud de comentar sobre este punto por la gran cantidad de noticias que he tenido (y por mi propia experiencia) sobre la conmoción que causa en un paciente recibir lo que consideraríamos una “mala noticia” sobre su salud.

Hablaré de mi caso, el 20 de julio de 2009 acudí a una esperada pero temida cita con el urólogo, sabía que la situación era complicada, porque tengo una piedra en el riñón derecho que ya alcanzó siete centímetros de largo –a pesar de que hace 8 años me hicieron una litotripcia–.

Rudeza innecesaria

El doctor apenas me miró porque su residente era quien llevaba la consulta, de repente me dijo: “Uy, no, yo creo que su riñón ya ni sirve” (creo que se quitó el zapato y me pegó en la cabeza porque así me sentí).

–         ¿Cómo?­–. Le pregunté.

–         Sí, con una piedra de ese tamaño yo no creo que funcione. Lo más probable es que se lo extirpemos.

(Segundo golpe, sin anestesia)

 Todo esto sucedió en segundos, a pesar de que parece imposible, me quedé sin palabras, sin embargo reaccioné rápido y pregunté

–         ¿No tendría que hacerme estudios antes de extirparme un riñón?

En tono de regaño (leve, pero regaño) me dijo

–         Pero ¡si ésta es una roca que mínimo tiene nueve años!

Yo contesté

–         Efectivamente doctor, por eso hace ocho años me operaron, lo que pasa es que creció de nuevo.

Se volvió al interno y le dijo:

–         Ordénale un gama grama.

Yo estaba tan impactada que quería llorar, no supe cómo le dije:

–         Por favor doctor, prométame que si me tiene que quitar un riñón podré sobrevivir con el otro, que voy a salir bien de la operación.

Él ya iba caminando hacia la puerta, volteó y me dijo:

–         Yo no puedo prometerle nada, yo no sé si va a sobrevivir.

Futuro incierto

Desde ese día, mi vida ha  cambiado, he dejado de hacer planes, estoy procurando dejar mis cosas en orden antes de la operación, pero lo peor de todo es que cada momento libre de mi cerebro está puesto en mi riñón.

Por supuesto, me dio una depresión muy fuerte, quienes lo saben tratan de reconfortarme diciendo que “todo va a salir bien” (ya hablé el viernes 9 de esto), se los agradezco, pero si el experto me apabulla de esa manera, es difícil creer en todo lo demás.

 Otro caso

Hace un año, el día de su cumpleaños, mi queridísimo primo Fernando recibió la confirmación de que tenía cáncer, la situación fue más o menos así:

–         Doctor, usted tiene un angio sarcoma en el muslo anterior de la pierna derecha (es decir, cáncer de músculo), lo voy a programar para amputarle la pierna.

Mi primo es médico y todavía no se recupera del golpe que significó para él esa noticia. Su esposa Patricia (quien también es doctora y es la mejor compañera que pudo tener) no se conformó con ese diagnóstico, buscó otras opiniones. Finalmente, lo operaron, le extirparon un tumor de ¡dos kilos y alrededor de 40 centímetros!,  no perdió la pierna, lo que sí perdió fue el sueño, la serenidad, la confianza y el valor. Después de este suceso, toda la familia colapsó: preocupación, desánimo, depresión. El cáncer ha regresado, quienes lo amamos buscamos desesperadamente una cura. Hoy con altas y con bajas vive un día a la vez, conserva la pierna y con ello su orgullo y autoestima, aunque la incertidumbre sigue siendo enorme.

Ejemplos,  estoy segura, sobran, unos más graves e impactantes con el mismo común denominador, la pregunta es ¿cuál es la causa de esas agresiones?, ¿ están conscientes los médicos del daño que hacen sus palabras a los pacientes? ¿Por qué actuan de una manera tan inhumana?

Enfoque centrado en quién

Cada hospital  tiene sus propios postulados sobre misión, visión, objetivos, etcétera. Aquí les muestro los derechos del paciente  según el IMSS:

Me parece que habría que replantear los derechos

El último punto es el único que menciona el trato digno y eficiente, pero eso no incluye recibir empatía, solidaridad, buen modo, consideración. No queremos que nos amen o nos abracen y lloren con nosotros, sólo que recuerden que somos personas que sienten, con la sensibilidad a flor de piel porque estamos enfermos y necesitamos sus conocimientos Y SU RESPETO.

La empatía (según la Real Academia Española) es la “Capacidad de identificarse con alguien y compartir sus sentimientos”. No queremos tanto, sólo comprensión. Ni siquiera en los hospitales privados se encuentra, necesariamente, el respeto al dolor y a la frustración que siente el paciente en las circunstancias que describo (lo sé porque mis hijos nacieron en una clínica privada y las dos operaciones que he tenido incluida la primera vez que me “quitaron las piedras” fue en instituciones privadas. En la actualidad no tengo seguro de gastos médicos y es en el Centro Médico donde me han tratado, he encontrado personal considerado y empático, no únicamente doctores fríos y distantes, excelentes recursos materiales aunque con tiempos de espera larguísimos).

Yo no soy mi enfermedad

Yo quiero ser más que un riñón con piedras, mi primo Fernando es mucho más que una pierna con cáncer y por ello debemos recibir, por lo menos, consideración. No sé qué piensen ustedes, pero creo que es invaluable un médico que ve a los ojos, que explica de dónde y por qué estamos así.

El calvario de la familia

De los familiares ni hablar, sufren el doble: por su ser querido y por el maltrato o indiferencia de médicos, enfermeras, personal administrativo, aseguradoras, trámites y además tienen que ser fuertes, apoyar, querer, no doblarse, fingir que todo está bien.

La medicina modena

No  cabe  duda, el amor al prójimo no es el eje de la mayoría de los médicos, por lo menos de los que yo conozco ahora, habría que recordarles que la ciencia es para los seres humanos, por fortuna hay muchos doctores entregados, comprometidos, cuidadosos y respetuosos, pero no puedo decir que forman la mayoría.

De regreso a Gruman

Jessie  Gruman recibió una noticia como las ya descritas y después de todo lo que ha padecido escribió la obra que menciono al principio, en ella da consejos sobre qué hacer una vez pasado el shock de la primera vez.

“Y en medio de esta angustia, cada uno de nosotros, independientemente del diagnóstico: VIH/SIDA, cáncer, enfermedad de Alzheimer, ALS, esclerosis múltiple, degeneración macular; necesariamente, para cuidarse, emprenderá  una serie de tareas que probablemente nunca llevamos a cabo antes, pero que puede tener un impacto importante en la vida de quienes nos rodean, los implicados”.

Menciona la importancia de investigar sobre las características de nuestra enfermedad o la de nuestro familiar, buscar todas las alternativas que tal vez no hemos considerado, éstas son algunas de sus sugerencias:

• Responder al impacto
• Obtener más información acerca del padecimiento y sus tratamientos
• Decidir si  se involucra a otros (ella menciona que hay quien quien elige platicarle a todos y quien prefiere guardarlo en privado)
• Encontrar médicos y hospitales adecuados (esto es muy difícil en el Sistema de salud mexicano: IMSS, ISSSTE, SSA)
• Buscar otras opiniones 
• Administrar la vida laboral
• Pagar por cuidados
• Encontrar alivio (terapias, grupos)
• Tomar las acciones necesarias

No he leído el libro completo, pero vi un programa donde la entrevistaron durante una hora. Recuerdo que Charlie Rose, el entrevistador, compartió su experiencia con Gruman, él tuvo un problema cardiaco grave, a pesar de ser un hombre inmensamente rico, igual que ella, se quejaba de lo mismo que yo les digo: falta de humanismo en los médicos.

Sueños guajiros

Ojalá para graduarse, alrededor del mundo, estos profesionista pasaran, por lo menos, un semestre estudiando a Carl Rogers, Viktor Frankl, Abraham Maslow, la Madre Teresa de Calcuta y muchos como ellos. Así, tal vez, tendríamos la esperanza de sensibilizar un poco a los futuros galenos, porque ahora ablandar un poco el corazón de aquellos doctores que ya lo tienen endurecido parece una tarea imposible.

Gracias por sus comentarios a mi entrada anterior han sido “mi consuelo”.

My formula for happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal. Nietzsche

Another fine presentation yesterday, on Viktor Frankl’s classic Man’s Search for Meaning and the “logo-therapy” his death camp experience led him to devise.

It’s very Nietzschean, the notion that what we need to thrive is not a tension-free state of “homeostasis” but rather the constant struggle and striving to achieve goals. Adversity will build our characters, we’ll look back on the most extreme challenges with gratitude for what hasn’t killed us but made us stronger. Etc.

But Frankl offers one lesson I’m not sure Nietzsche ever got. What’s the “ultimate and highest goal” of living, our salvation and fulfillment?

That’s right, ask the Beatles, or Prof. Levy.  Love, love, love… but that’s not all, you also need work and attachment to something larger than self and, maybe, a place of your own… and a reliable glove in left would be nice, too.

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances”

Viktor Frankl (Author of Man’s Search for Meaning)

Poker Without Cards. A Consciousness Thriller.

I have made numerous attempts to write a review of Poker Without Cards and have come to the conclusion that it is a task much harder than I first anticipated. I will, however, make another attempt in the hope that this will do it justice as I feel that anyone who reads it will benefit greatly! But please don’t take my word for it!

A Joseph Matheny (Is he real?) has written the intro to Poker Without Cards and is of a different opinion to quote the final line of the introduction: “Since you have gotten this far I suppose you are going to read the transcript. Far be it from me to try and stop you.”

I failed to follow his advice and did read it. In fact, I have so far read it 4 times and always found it difficult to let go of it. Have I been infected?

The first time I read it I was somewhat bewildered and baffled at what this particular transcript was all about and yet I found it difficult not to carry on!

The format of Poker Without Cards is a transcript of the recording of a conversation beteween a Dr William Fink and a Howard Campbell, which takes place during 7 sessions in which Dr Fink is trying to understand what led his patient, Richard Wilson (Bucky) to be admitted to his mental hospital!

Well, that is the very basic of it and is really nothing more than the sceleton. It is the content of the conversation that takes you on what I can only describe as a “Mind Journey” and if you manage to read the whole book without giving in to the urge of googling certain stuff then you have done far better than me, who failed that part miserably. To take that a step further, I have compiled a reading list based on the stuff referenced in Poker Without Cards (Call me insane!)………..

Despair = Suffering – Meaning

So Viktor Frankl says in the video above, summarizing his theory of logotherapy, which I’ve read at greater length in his book Man’s Search for Meaning. In other words, if people suffer but see meaning in their life, and even in their suffering, they do not despair, as he himself did not despair when he was in Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

He is therefore, as he also says in this video, the anti-Sartre. Sartre and the other existentialists believed that we have to accept the meaninglessness of our existence. I, in my black-turtleneck and Gauloise phase (everyone has one), used to think that was cool. But Frankl thinks it is nonsense.

Or rather, he thinks that it is unhealthy and unhelpful. Hence logotherapy, which

focuses rather on the future, that is to say, on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future. (Logotherapy, indeed, is a meaning-centered psychotherapy).

He calls it logotherapy because

Logos is a Greek word which denotes “meaning.” Logotherapy, or, as it has been called by some authors, “The Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy,” focuses on the meaning of human existence as well as on man’s search for such a meaning.

According to logotherapy,

this striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man. That is why I speak of a will to meaning in contrast to the pleasure principle (or, as we could also term it, the will to pleasure) on which Freudian psychoanalysis is centered, as well as in contrast to the will to power on which Adlerian psychology, using the term “striving for superiority,” is focused.

Speaking of the will to power, Frankl likes to quote Nietzsche:

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” I can see in these words a motto which holds true for any psychotherapy. In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive.

Those people who do see meaning in their lives, says Frankl, are able to

transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.

And here you see how this is relevant for my book, which is about the two impostors, triumph and disaster.

Critique

I want to agree with Frankl, but the trouble starts when he describes how he applies his approach to actual therapy. To me it sounds like semantic trickery. He meets desperate people and tries to change their attitude, but really he only does some conceptual gymnastics and calls that meaning.

Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now, how could I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, “What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?” “Oh,” he said, “for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!” Whereupon I replied, “You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering—to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her.” He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

I don’t doubt that the old man, out of love for his wife, preferred to bear the pain of being the survivor so that she did not have to. But his wife was still gone. His job (surviving her) was done. Pointing out that he had saved her pain did not give him meaning for his life from that point forward.

So my critique of logotherapy is really the same as my critique of religion: Sure, it might be helpful to see meaning (= believe in God), but that does not mean that there actually is meaning (=God). Sartre might be right after all.

That said, I am impressed enough with Frankl to include him in my pantheon of great thinkers.

I’m weeping even now as I post this, though I wrote it days ago.  It’s some of the stuff I’m working through (or some days, not being able to work through). It’s quite lengthy, probably depressing, and I still don’t know if I even want to post it or not.  Neal and I have been debating how to work through my grief, more praying (probably never a bad idea), maybe another round of therapy (some people don’t know this about me, but that would be round #4 in my adult life), more talking about it, less talking about it.  I guess I’ll try this and see what happens and go from there.

***

I remember my first few phone calls with my mom after my roommates and I were in a big car accident in the summer of 2003.  Despite surviving what could easily have been a fatal crash, I felt no real fear.  I told her, probably too matter-of-factly, look at it this way, no one is in two crazy car accidents in their lifetime.  Now I’ve gotten it out of the way, you don’t have to worry about that anymore.  Statistically speaking, I still think I have some sort of ground to stand on because it is very unlikely that a person would be involved in two cataclysmic accidents (particularly if they are a passenger in both, as I was, meaning it has nothing to do with their driving ability).  But the older I’ve gotten the more I understand how unhelpful my “insights” were.  Probably first and foremost because this happened less than 3 years later:

(So much for a universe where you could accurately compute probability)

But also because she understood better than I just how uncertain this life is, and how having children intensifies that feeling with these beings that are both part of you and separate from you.  You can’t control them, or what happens to them, and the illusion we create that we do have control over this uncertain world vanishes, sometimes over long periods of time and sometimes in these earth-shattering, life-changing moments.

This is actually a post about miscarriage; I just didn’t know how to get it rolling.  A couple of months ago, I was sitting in Sacrament Meeting and I felt this intense spiritual prompting that I needed to talk about my miscarriage during a Relief Society lesson I was teaching that day.  It was both a dramatic and traumatic experience because I had never spoken publicly about it, and really not very much privately either (at least in comparison to just how much I’ve thought about it).  I sobbed through the rest of Sacrament Meeting, and surprisingly (that’s a joke in case anyone doesn’t know that I cry pretty much every. single. day.) I still had tears left in Relief Society.  I’m honestly not sure what people heard me say because I felt like I was completely unintelligible through all the weeping.

Afterward a sister asked me about how recent the miscarriage was, thinking that it was in May (this was June).  And it struck me how out of proportion my grief must seem since it was quite a few months earlier.  I thought that some sisters who didn’t ask probably thought it happened yesterday with the way I could barely speak about it.  Since then I’ve been wondering about my grief, wondering if part of its length is just how little I’ve talked about it.  All I know for sure is that it is raw; some days I feel like it is still happening.  I’ve read a lot about other people’s experiences with miscarriage and I’ve talked to people I know, and I can’t help feeling some difference there.  I mean, most of them felt so eager to try to have another baby while for months I felt completely guilty to even consider it (of course, I also felt an opposite pull based on the fact that my body is sometimes not-so-slowly breaking down and the window for bearing children seems brief).  I’m ultimately unsure if I wanted to feel like my suffering was like theirs in order to make some sense out of it, or if I wanted it to be uniquely mine.

I remember reading Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl when I was 18 or 19 and beginning to wrap my mind around the fact that suffering is relative.   Thank goodness he understood this better than I do because can you imagine a therapist who survived the Holocaust not being willing to accept the truly subjective nature of the human experience—I have been in many therapy sessions in my life and thank heaven none of them included the phrase, “You think that’s bad, I remember the first day in the concentration camp . . . .”  Of course, the ultimately mind-bending part of this concept for me is that even our own suffering is relative.  It’s not just that we can’t understand other people’s subjective experience, but that from one minute to the next we can’t really accurately interpret our own.

I’ve had this internal monologue with myself at least once a day for many months now: you’ve suffered much worse than this.  This is nothing compared to, say, the whole of 1999 and 2000. And at face value, I agree; at that point I was completely lost mentally and emotionally, and physically I couldn’t really get out of bed most days.   But that’s where this whole relativity issue comes in because on many days I feel like the sorrow now is both so acute and so unending that I could never possibly have felt worse.  So am I really suffering more now than I ever have before, or do I just feel this now and so it feels worse even though it isn’t?  And here’s that uncertainty again because I’ll really never know.  It’s entirely possible that even though my life was demonstrably worse back then, my capacity for feeling has grown to such an extent that both joy and sorrow are deeper now.

I suspect that most mothers would agree that our capacity for feeling actually does grow, at least that seems to be what many are trying to articulate when they first have a child and feel internal changes taking place.  Of course, that comes back to part of the rub: to the world I am not a mother.  This doesn’t really bother me because it is the only rational way to view my current situation, but it does underscore why I think it’s so difficult to communicate what I’ve been feeling and experiencing for many months.  The way I’ve sometimes articulated it is that I feel like I’m walking around a totally different person than I was a year ago, but no one can see it.

It’s not as if I have a grand answer about how the world should act differently but I just know that I am often left feeling that there is no place for dealing with miscarriage, particularly early miscarriage.  The further along you are the more people acknowledge that you have, in fact, lost a baby.  I don’t begrudge people the things they say to try to be helpful because I know it is an impossible situation to be really helpful in, but it is hard to endure the implications that there was barely the seed of a baby, not really a baby at all, almost like a wish that never materialized.  Because, at the risk of being too graphic, you are physically passing real things out of your system, and at least for me, it was truly and deeply distressing.  And then came the real surprise that those days were the easy days compared to what came after: the trying in vain to figure out how to say goodbye to someone that you just absolutely were not ready to say goodbye to.  Someone that was real to you, but didn’t exist for anyone else.  Someone that you miss everyday, but no one else will ever remember, save God himself.

It’s been many months now and I’m moving on with life (I can’t adequately express how guilty I feel when I say that.  Even though I know that’s how life works—it moves, whether we move with it or not—it still feels like a betrayal to the ones that we have to let go of, even if temporarily, in order to move forward).  I’m trying not to lie in bed watching TV and movies or surfing the internet all day long everyday (maybe someday I will try to go a full day without escaping to one of these things, although truthfully that day seems a very long way off).  I’m trying not to stay awake all night thinking and grieving (tonight is clearly not a good example of that effort).  But I guess I wanted to capture something of how I’ve felt before time passes and I forget how intense and painful it all is/was.

Hoy he pasado de la reflexión a la carcajada en cuestión de cinco minutos. Ordenando unos artículos que estuve imprimiendo ayer para leerlos con más comodidad, me quedé enganchada a una frase que abría uno de los textos. Era una cita de un libro de Viktor Frankl, titulado “El hombre en busca del sentido” (A Search For Meaning). Siempre que me pasa algo así, le presto atención, a ver dónde me lleva esa idea. De modo que garabateé algunas notas en el margen, aparté la hoja en cuestión para dedicarle un rato después de atender las cuestiones más importantes, y continué con los asuntos del día.

La carcajada sobrevino pocos minutos más tarde cuando lancé la página de inicio de mi navegador, que en mi caso es Yahoo, y leí el encabezamiento del titular de una noticia, que decía así:

“¿Estrés postvacacional?  Si sufres una pequeña depresión, irritabilidad, insomnio y falta de todo…Tranquilo: se te pasará en 3 días…”

Recién llegada de unas vacaciones de mucho descanso, playita y vistas ideales, mi primera reacción fue tomarlo a chiste. Ya sabes, el típico artículo con que se llenan los huecos cuando no hay noticias de verdad. Pero no, resutó que no era chiste.

No es mi intención tomar a broma las preocupaciones de la gente, pero ¿no te parece irónico y, hasta cierto punto grosero, que en un mundo azotado por innumerables calamidades -naturales y fabricadas por nosotros, los humanos-, algunos de los comparativamente pocos afortunados que podemos tomarnos vacaciones, en vez de disfrutar del privilegio, recargar baterías y sentirse agradecidos, se estresen por tener que volver a sus vidas cotidianas? ¿No tienes la sensación de que algo no encaja en este cuadro?

El artículo seguía:

“Los perfeccionistas, las personas inseguras y quienes tienen previamente patologías psicológicas son las más afectadas por el estrés posvacacional propio de estos días, ya que son las que encuentran más problemas para adaptarse de nuevo a la rutina. La buena noticia es que, según los expertos, normalmente esta situación se supera en un máximo de tres días…” Según el psicólogo Ricardo Ros:  “Al 60 ó 70 por ciento de las personas les cuesta un poco adaptarse a la rutina después de estar de vacaciones durante un mes, pero normalmente en un día, dos o tres todos nos adaptamos”.

“¿60 ó 70%? Algo definitivamente no cuadra”, pensé. Entonces, la cita de Frankl que había apartado volvió a mi mente, y me parece que arroja algo de luz acerca de qué es eso que no cuadra.  Dice así:

“Muchos de nosotros tenemos suficiente para vivir, pero nada por lo que vivir; tenemos los medios, pero no el propósito“. Viktor Frankl (1).

Las dificultades económicas derivadas de la actual coyuntura económica internacional, las largas jornadas laborales, el inicio de un nuevo curso escolar (o las compras/reuniones Navideñas, o la cuesta de enero, etc)… Montones de cosas que atender y el día que sólo tiene las mismas veinticuatro horas de siempre.

Resulta fácil que la actividad cotidiana y el ajetreo de la vida nos atrape hasta el punto de que sencillamente, sólo queda la inercia… y el stress, pero ¿realmente, tenemos una clara comprensión de nuestro destino? ¿Sabemos hacia adónde nos dirigimos? Y lo más importante, toda esa actividad y ese ajetreo ¿nos llevan donde deseamos ir? ¿nos acercan al objetivo? Porque sólo así cada paso que demos tendrá sentido -propósito-, y darlo, será fuente de alegría, y no de depresión.

(1) Viktor Frankl fue un neurólogo y psiquiatra austríaco, fundador de la Logoterapia. La esencia de esta filosofía dice que muchas de las denominadas enfermedades mentales y emocionales son en realidad síntomas de una sensación subyacente de falta de significado, o vacuidad. La logoterapia la elimina a través de ayudar al individuo a detectar su misión en la vida. Encontrarás más información sobre la vida de este hombre singular aquí.

I promised to ruminate on Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning.

First, for those of you who have not read the book, a quick overview:

The book is short and easy to read. It has two parts:

1. In Part I, Frankl talks about his own survival in Auschwitz and several other concentration camps, and his psychological observations about himself and others during that time.
2. In Part II, Frankl gives an overview of his psychiatric theory, which is called logotherapy, and which his observations about camp life were meant to prove/affirm.

As for Part I, I recommend it for everybody. I believe it is a timeless piece of writing, all the more so for its brevity and simplicity. In a compassionate, measured and compelling writer’s voice, Frankl gives us a view of what it was like. His tone is the opposite of shrill or sensationalist. He makes especially the “ordinary” details of this extraordinary experience unforgettably vivid.

And he gives order to his account. In particular, he describes the mental stages that inmates like himself went through.

Shock

First there was shock. Frankl particularly emphasizes how he found it hard to part with a manuscript that he was carrying with him when he was being admitted to Auschwitz. It already contained his complete logotherapy theory–and thus a large part of what he considered to be the meaning of his life–and having to surrender it was his first big shock.

Apathy

Then there was apathy. Apathy is usually a bad word nowadays, but Frankl shows us how it was a necessary reaction for survival. Consider this passage (Kindle locations 388-93), in which he is looking out of a window in his cottage at a dead man:

The corpse which had just been removed stared in at me with glazed eyes. Two hours before I had spoken to that man. Now I continued sipping my soup. If my lack of emotion had not surprised me from the standpoint of professional interest, I would not remember this incident now, because there was so little feeling involved in it. Apathy, the blunting of the emotions and the feeling that one could not care any more, were the symptoms arising during the second stage of the prisoner’s psychological reactions, and which eventually made him insensitive to daily and hourly beatings.

Meaning

And then there was the issue of meaning. Inmates had one of two reactions:

1. Some inmates saw no meaning in their suffering and in their lives anymore. Those inmates eventually gave up. They might one day be seen smoking the cigarette butt they had been hoarding while lying in their feces on the bunk, not intending to get up again, consuming their last pleasure while resigned to dying.
2. Other inmates, including Frankl, saw or found meaning in their suffering and had a chance at survival. Frankl found meaning, for instance, in the ideas that had been contained in the manuscript that was now lost, and that he now had a duty to resurrect by surviving the camps. And he found meaning in the idea that his wife, also in the camps and perhaps dead, might still be alive and need him.

In Frankl’s words (locations 1168-70):

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how.”

Here he talks about one moment when he felt his wife’s presence (locations 632-41):

I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. “Et lux in tenebris lucet”—and the light shineth in the darkness. For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present, that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there. Then, at that very moment, a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me.

Captivity in liberation

And then, for the lucky ones like himself, there was the challenge–yes, challenge–of liberation. Most inmates found it very hard to be set free at last. Many had lost their moral fiber, their personality, their optimism, their humanity in the camps and were now at a loss, unable to enjoy freedom.

Here are just a few insights worth pondering:

Humor: It’s necessary.

From locations 670-73 and 681-85:

Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds. I practically trained a friend of mine who worked next to me on the building site to develop a sense of humor.

The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. Yet it is possible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent. To draw an analogy: a man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the “size” of human suffering is absolutely relative.

Humanity: Not guards versus inmates but decent men versus indecent

This is surprising, perhaps, but Frankl did not observe the camp as Nazis versus Jews, or guards versus inmates, but as decent versus indecent.

Among the guards he saw some decent men along with the indecent. And among the prisoners, he saw some of the most indecent, in particular the ones they called the “capos”–inmates who had made themselves complicit with the guards for personal favor and who were often the most sadistic men in the whole camp.

The primacy of attitude

What made some prisoners resilient and others not? In a word, attitude.

Loc. 973-74 and 981-82

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

The sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.

With the wrong attitude, a prisoner saw life as pointless, meaningless:

Loc. 1056-61

It became easy to overlook the opportunities to make something positive of camp life, opportunities which really did exist. Regarding our “provisional existence” as unreal was in itself an important factor in causing the prisoners to lose their hold on life; everything in a way became pointless. Such people forgot that often it is just such an exceptionally difficult external situation which gives man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond himself. Instead of taking the camp’s difficulties as a test of their inner strength, they did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence. They preferred to close their eyes and to live in the past. Life for such people became meaningless.

But with the right attitude, prisoners saw a positive opportunity even in a concentration camp:

Loc. 1065-67

Most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.

Obviously, there is a lot more to say about Frankl and logotherapy, but let’s pick that up in another post.

I’ll have much more to say about Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning, which I recently finished reading. But today just one little story that Frankl, a psychotherapist who survived Auschwitz, tells in the book.

He calls it Death in Tehran (Kindle locations 846-51) and uses it to suggest that we are often our own worst enemies, that our very fear of something can make it come about:

A rich and mighty Persian once walked in his garden with one of his servants. The servant cried that he had just encountered Death, who had threatened him. He begged his master to give him his fastest horse so that he could make haste and flee to Teheran, which he could reach that same evening. The master consented and the servant galloped off on the horse. On returning to his house the master himself met Death, and questioned him, “Why did you terrify and threaten my servant?” “I did not threaten him; I only showed surprise in still finding him here when I planned to meet him tonight in Teheran,” said Death.

There’s a story of a little 102 pound man in India who went around half naked, who lived in a mud hut that never had a telephone or an electric light or running water.  He did not own a car.  He had no wealth, no armies, no servants, nor diplomats.  He never sought, nor ever held, public office, and yet the great British Empire realized they could not rule India against Gandhi and they could not rule India without Gandhi.  Because of his uncompromising honesty and unmatched willpower, Mohandas K. Gandhi was the most powerful man in India despite being socially retarded, having a bad temper, and being a self-declared coward in his earlier life.

Similarly, a young man grew up in rural South Africa content and at peace with his circumstances and the world.  “I was not born with a hunger to be free,” he writes:

“But then I slowly saw that not only was I not free, but my brothers and sisters were not free.  That is when the hunger for my own freedom became the greater hunger for the freedom of my people.”  Nelson Mandela slowly and incrementally transformed from a content country boy into an active freedom-fighter against the cruel Apartheid South African government.  He further explains, “It was this desire for the freedom of my people to live their lives with dignity and self-respect that animated my life, that transformed a frightened young man into a bold one, that drove a law-abiding attorney to become a criminal, that turned a family-loving husband into a man without a home, that forced a life-loving man to live like a monk.  I am no more virtuous or self-sacrificing than the next man, but I found that I could not even enjoy the poor and limited freedoms I was allowed when I knew my people were not free.  Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me (Mandela, 1994)”

Mandela spent over 27 years in prison for fighting against injustice.  A short time after he was finally freed from prison he became the president of his home country, South Africa.

What was it that made these “cowardly” and “frightened” men become the most powerful men in their respective nations?  Louis Fischer, Gandhi’s biographer, calls this process by which a below-average human being can raise himself to great power and accomplishment the “miracle of personality (Fischer, 1948).”

Personality and Personality Dynamics

Personality may be defined as the underlying causes within the person of individual behavior and experience (Cloninger, 2008).  From this definition, and slight variations of it, stem what are called personality dynamics.  Personality dynamics refers to the mechanisms by which personality is expressed, often focusing on the motivations that direct behavior (Cloninger, 2008).

There are many motivations, on many levels, that add direction and energy to behavior.  Many theorists have developed theories trying to explain different possible motivations behind behaviors.  Freud believed that sexual motivations were the underlying personality.  Carl Rogers thought there was a tendency for a person to move toward higher levels of development.  Viktor Frankl believed finding meaning was the motivating force behind personality.  Even when life is not ideal and even at its worst, life has found its worth if there is meaning as a motivating force.  Frankl (1959) states, “In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of sacrifice.”  Other theorists proposed that each individual has their own goals and motives of personality and therefore there are a multiplicity of categories and adjectives to explain these motives.

Cognitive Processes and Culture and Personality Dynamics

Through senses and cognitive processes interpreting stimuli, we have an understanding of the world.  If attention is not given to a stimulus or our senses are dulled or handicapped, we will interpret the world differently than if we perceived the stimulus in a more veritable form.  The person who is blind will perceive the world in ways in which a seeing person has no idea, and vice versa.  Within the brain of a blind person, sight is not processed in the visual cortex but that visual cortex has adapted to giving above average attention to hearing and proprioception. (Schwartz, 2002).  Thus, cognition-or the lack thereof-is compensated to a degree from one area to another.  Through cognitive processes giving attention to and interpreting our senses, one grasps somewhat, those motives discussed earlier, and acts and reacts according to one’s personality.  To understand human functioning, it is imperative to account for the physical, emotional, mental, social, cultural, political, and spiritual dimensions and how one cognitively interprets these respective facets of understanding (Corey, 2005).

Today, the term “culture” is widely understood to refer to the systematic body of learned behavior which is transmitted to children from parents, schools, and communities (Robbins, 2006).  Not very long ago, “culture” was a concept that was part of the vocabulary of only a small and technical group of anthropologists.  It hadn’t yet been widely accepted that from the moment of our births, the customs into which one is born exert an enormous impact on one’s experience, personality, and behavior.

This changed with the work of one of the world’s most renowned anthropologists, Ruth Benedict.  According to her student, friend, and colleague, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict’s work is the main reason that the words “in our culture” have come to be widely used and understood.  Largely thanks to her, people have come to understand how profoundly one is shaped by the cultures in which one lives (Robbins, 2006).

Important Influence on Personality Development

Culture, in its more inclusive sense, is an important and major influence on personality development.  It is a combination of innate personality characteristics reacting with one’s culture, including environment and social interactions, which produce behavior in an individual.  To understand one’s personality one must understand the culture which gave it fruition.  And through that understanding one is able to gain a deeper understanding of that person’s behavior.  Gandhi’s and Mandela’s behavior would appear heinous and senseless without the proper cultural context.  Yet within the proper context these men are referred to with such adjectives as “hero”, “freedom fighter”, and “Mahatma” (great soul).  Understanding personality is a monumental task that includes understanding a person’s whole self.

Article by Ernie Wild

Today, I was struck with a case of what my husband and I have taken to calling “the Sabbath doldrums.”  We call them the doldrums because they amount to feelings of restlessness, boredom, gloominess, and irritability.  And we connect them with Sabbath because they tend to crop up on Saturday afternoons, and, because of our religious background, we’re used to referring to Saturday as Sabbath.

I used to think the Sabbath doldrums were something that just I, and maybe occasionally my husband, ran up against.  But, my husband recently came across this surprising passage in Viktor Frankl’s amazing book Man’s Search for Meaning that made me think otherwise:

Let us consider, for instance, “Sunday neurosis,” that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest.

Frankl experienced the Sabbath (or Sunday) doldrums too, or at least he knew people who did!  What a relief not to be the only one!

Today’s funk and this new revelation that I’m not the only one who gets in such funks made me think I should write down a list of strategies for scaring the doldrums away–both for myself so that I’ll know what to do when they come around  and for anyone else who might be looking for depression-fighting tactics.  After all, this blog is supposed to be about cultivating happiness and a good spirit!  So, here’s a list of advice for helping to keep the blues at bay:

1. Plan your weekend activities ahead of time. If you know exactly what you’re going to do–visit a friend, read a book, make a good meal, work on a creative project–you won’t get a chance to feel restless and bored.

2. Keep your living space clean. I’m a much happier human being when my house is clean, so I usually try to do a good household cleaning on Friday afternoons so it will be clean on Saturday.

3. Eat. I’m horrible about keeping nourished, especially when I start to feel blue–just ask my husband.  But, I do know somewhere in the back of my head that I’ll be happier if I just eat good food at regular times throughout the day.  It sounds obvious, but it’s crucial for remaining happy.

4. If you feel the doldrums coming on, go find a quiet place to be alone and just face them for a while. Like I’ve said, I try to plan my weekend activities ahead of time so that I can keep busy and avoid boredom.  However, if I do start to feel gloomy, I’ve found that distracting myself by, say, surfing the internet, just makes me feel worse in the long run.  It’s better to admit to myself that I feel gloomy and then dwell in my gloominess for a little while.  Eventually, even sitting around thinking about being bored gets boring, and I’ll want to get up and do something.

So, those are the things I do to ward off the Sabbath doldrums.  Do you ever experience weekend gloominess?  What do you do to shew it away?

Don’t aim at success–the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run–in the long run, I say–success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.

Read more: http://www.gaia.com/quotes/Viktor_Frankl#ixzz0PA7TnvLk

Yesterday, I finished listening to Viktor Frankl’s classic book, “Man’s Search for Meaning.” It had been recommended by a couple of authors I read this summer. The book and the story of Dr. Frankl is truly riveting. I really like this quote though because it contains an essential truth. I recommend the book to you either to read or listen to as I did..

A few months back, about 6 months or so, you could say that I was in a state of confusion, in a dilemma of sorts, coupled with sinusoidal levels of depression. You could see me almost always, dazed and wouldn’t participate much in a discussion. Always lethargic. Just popping out whenever there’s a “need” or a “requirement”. But most of the times, just at home streaming the many TV series there are over the net. Asleep during the day, awake during the night. You hardly call it living.

I think it was because of analyis-paralysis. I was thinking too much of what steps to take. Or what choice. Or if I had any. That’s because shortly after I graduated last March 2008, I wanted to work. But normally, in this country, my course BS Electronics and Communications Engineering has a board exam. And my parents wanted me to review full time. And review I did. Approximately 6 months of review. And I should say that it wasn’t worth it. The time, the review, the exam. But I passed. Since that was October-November, I thought not much companies would hire during those times. So in my efforts not to be idle, I took some teaching load in Ateneo. Just for a semester maybe. While I was at it, I also took some MS units. I figured that maybe it will boost my resume for some reason. No intention really of finishing the MS. I just took it because I dont really want to stay idle. And if I wanted to take an MS, I want it outside the country. With scholarship of course. So I applied for the Erasmus Mundus scholarship in Europe and KAUST in Saudi (which I didn’t finish).

I wasnt able to get in the scholarship. And when the time for my stay as a part time faculty draws to an end, I was hearing a lot about the recession. The problem with me that time was that I didnt try looking for jobs even because the target companies that I have I heard were freeze hiring. And I didnt want to settle on a management type of work on my first job which I think is pretty much do-able even from an ECE background. And I’ve heard cases of people still getting hired in the recession in the company I heard that was freeze hiring. Maybe my assumption was wrong. Or maybe those cases were cases of older people with experience settling for a lower pay in some other company. I dont know.

I felt that I was stuck between a rock and a hard place and maybe another hard place. Dont want to finish my MS here. Dont want to wait for the next cycle. It’s too long. Recession hitting the Philippines. Not wanting to settle for a management-type of work. Me worrying that my parents expect me to go work and help the family by sending some of my earnings. All that stuff. Plus all sorts of observation as to how my batchmates are doing. I would admit I felt envy. Especially with the people who went to KAUST because they can do their nerdy/geeky stuff in a university that has partnered with the top universities in the world and they dont have to worry about any expenses. They get to travel. And for some of them, they can even send some money back to their family.

So there I was. Stuck. Rock and a hard place. Limiting my living space to my bed and computer. And all that can-do mentality I had before, all that the-impossible-is-possible was gone. It was actually because of some other reason, part of the sinusoidal depression, but still connected to the whole picture of being stuck. And I didnt feel that I am living. Just another zombie watching TV series.

It did go on for months and the awareness of not doing anything meaningful and being lethargic began to sink in. You get that distasteful feeling that you arent proud of yourself. I dont know what caused me to bounce back. I think it was more like of an avalanche. Little things hitting other things causing more things to hit and gain momentum and before you know it, you have an unstoppable crushing force coming at you at break neck speed.

Maybe it was some quotes in the TV series I was watching. One Tree Hill. I was watching out of boredom. And what do you know? Beneath all that sappy high school teenage drama, you have some nice quotes and nice music to go with.

Here’s one from Nathan Scott in one of the introductions.

“Stepping up…It’s a simple concept. It basically means to rise above yourself, to do a little more, to show you something special. Something like this…Lucas is gone, but that doesn’t mean the season is over. As a matter of fact, I say it’s just beginning. You might want to stay out of my way for a while. Life’s funny sometimes, can push pretty hard like when you fall in love with someone but they forget to love you back, like when your best friend and your boyfriend leave you alone, like when you pull the trigger or light the flame and you can’t take it back. Like I said, in sports they call this “stepping up”. In life, I call it “pushing back” You know it’s been said that we just don’t recognize the significant moments of our lives while they’re happening. We grow complacent with ideas or things or people and we take them for granted and it’s usually not until that thing is about to be taken away from you that you’ve realized how wrong you’ve been that you realized how much you need it, how much you love it. God, I love this game. You ever heard the expression “the best things in live are free”? Well, that expression is true. Every once in a while, people step up they rise above themselves…sometimes they surprise you and sometimes they fall short. Life is funny sometimes. It can push pretty hard but if you look close enough, you can find hope in the words of children, in the bars of the song and in the eyes of someone you love. And if you’re lucky, if you’re the luckiest person on this entire planet, the person you love decides to love you back…“

I was more into the stepping up and pushing back part. Come to think of it, I really havent seen myself stepping up in college.

Maybe it was some talk with Sir Bong Monje. As most ECE people would know, Sir Monje would be regarded as a terror. And a lot of people have failed his class only to see him the following semester or year. I dont really have any issues with him and I find that at least his methods of teaching can pound sense into an ECE student’s brain. So sometime in my daze, I chatted with him saying some things about dilemnas and what I want to happen in the next 5 years or so. And he said to me, which is more like of a reminder, that when you choose, you forgo the other choices. Because you have chosen. It was quite simple. Philo-ish. But simple. And it gives an introspection of what was happening to me. That I am feeling unhappy and all that because I couldn’t walk clearly on one choice because I keep looking at the consequences of the other choice.

Maybe it was Sir Nat Libatique also talking to me about giving myself options. If I remember it right, he was saying that being in an MS program gives you an option to work or not to. Some sort of stronger position more of saying that the compensation for working should really be high enough to “win you over” while still doing your MS. It was a different perspective since most of the views here say that you dont need an MS and that companies really look for work experience. And Sir Nat kindof showed a possibility of me to use that state of MS in another way. More like saying to the companies that I have something to fall back to and that they better pay me competitively if they want me in their company because I have the option of doing further studies. Lesser probability of having a different form of thinker in their company. Kindof like that.

Maybe it was the effect of all the Theology and Philosophy classes in college. Words coming from Martin Heidegger that life is self-projecting project. Or Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning that “he who has the why to live can bear with almost any how”. Maybe the church songs. Maybe Switchfoot songs. This is your life, are you who you wanna be.

Maybe it was excerpts from Ben Cashnoca’s My Startup Life.

“Part of being responsible for your life is also taking responsibility for your enjoyment of life. If you are not enjoying your life, dont blame it on someone else. Go figure out how to make it more enjoyable under your own power and your own terms.” – Heidi Roizen

I dont know what it is really. As I’ve said, maybe it was like an avalanche. But in the end, I chose to take my MS here. Because I might waste time if I wait for the next cycle. Because I dont want to go to a job that I dont care about. And I know fully well how the department operates. I know that by making it more geared towards research, I have a feeling that I might lack the usual formal skills development that universities outside have. And I thought that I will rely on my own will. That I’ll figure it out. That the world is flat and that I have access to almost any information or book or whatever through the net and I can do it.

But I also figured out that being a full time MS means that I might just be going to class on a full day Saturday. Nothing to do on the rest of the week. And I know that coding everyday might polarize me more to just one side. It might also make me easier to break down or get bored. So I listed tons of possible things that I want to learn and things I want to do, even the ones that required some money. Here goes the list:

guitar, python, java, C++, perl, lisp, data structures, ruby on rails, joomla, operating systems, neural nets, artificial intelligence, google android, webprogramming, finance, accounting, project management, grid computing, genetic algorithms, evolutionary computing, interface with the web, google wave, php/mysql, kannel, opencv, opengl, unix/linux, tutorials, java wireless, starbucks barista, call center, bartender, ask auntie melba about business, automobile, gym, skydiving, wakeboarding, surfing, wall climbing, archery, gun range, dancing, ultimate frisbee, badminton, airsoft, version control, assembly, photography, cooking, swimming, foreign language, violin, singing, piano

With all those things I wanted to do, I realized that MS really opens that possibility of doing things that you really want to do. Especially an MS program with a scholarship that has a stipend. Now I tried to narrow it down, and I realized that I just need an outdoor thing to counter my geekiness. And one thing that would probably target a lot of the things I wanted to do would be to join the Loyola Mountaineers. Not only climbing mountains but also water sports. It hits gym and opens up the possibility for the other sports. It also intersects with photography and cooking. Then I also took a free guitar lessons in the Campus Ministry Office. More liturgical songs but at least you get to practice every week. And the concepts still apply to non-liturgical songs.

As for financial aspects, I would say that 15K pesos a month as stipend is not that bad considering it’s tax free and you only go to school for a total of 9 hours a week. Plenty of time do other things that might augment your income.

So yeah, life seems to be pretty much okay and maybe even wonderful as of now. Just need to keep stepping up or pushing back.