Rachel’s Musings

I had trouble getting out of bed this morning. Only having a full agenda got me out of bed rather than staying there nurturing my self-pity or anxiety, whatever it is. None of the excuses for avoiding my morning walk were convincing even to the me that didn’t want to walk. So, my morning routine kicked in still mentally struggling with wondering if I am smart enough to be back in school. I only have evidence against that doubt from one class so far. Still waiting to hear on the other exams. And even with that class, the little dragon in my head keeps whispering that this was just a fluke the real me will soon be discovered – and she’s a failure. What’s really tugging at my soul – and that’s not meant in a religious sense but rather as a short way of referring to that which at least seems to be there beyond the material of our neurons firing, maybe consciousness would be a better term but that doesn’t sound as good during an existential struggle – what is really tugging at my soul is the realization that I’ve taken too many wrong turns in my life, that I am really not where I would like to be and the fear, sometimes overwhelming, that it’s too late to get back on my path now that I have somewhat of a sense what that path might be. And I am hitting all the social no-nos. Here I am a 40-something single woman going back to school – I am not supposed to do that! I am supposed to be happily married with 2.5 kids, established in my fulfilling career, owning a beautiful home. I don’t have any of that! I am happily single, changing careers, and renting. I have a child but he’s an adult now, so even that I’ve done backwards by having him way earlier than social norm. But, again, what’s tugging at my soul is the fear that it’s too late to change course. Maybe it’s true that we don’t learn as well when we’re older and what am I doing pursuing a philosophy degree – that’s irresponsible! I can’t make money with that! And then, I am choosing to be single. How dare I! That’s too uppity even for a feminist (I might explain that in an upcoming post – why do I think choosing to be single is uppity?).

All that, or some less articulated version of it, went through my head as I was putting on my exercise clothes. I headed out the door. And then I saw the writing on the sidewalk: Jesus loves you! “Well, at least someone loves me,” went through my head, almost immediately followed by a realization. In our hypercompetitive world where a person is only good enough if she achieves by the social standards set by who knows whom, self-love is a rarity. The only way we can get unconditional love is through an imaginary being (God) or through a dead and decomposed guy (Jesus). And this acceptable form of self-love – for if God and Jesus cannot really love you because they don’t exist, this is a form of self-love – has subverted a possibly healthier way of taking care of the self practiced in ancient philosophy. Michel Foucault put the shift this way (284):

In the Greco-Roman world, the care of the self was the mode in which individual freedom – or civic liberty, up to a point – was reflected as an ethics. [...] the theme of the care of the self thoroughly permeated moral reflection. [...] in our societies on the other hand, at a time that is very difficult to pinpoint, the care of the self became somewhat suspect. Starting at a certain point, being concerned with oneself was readily denounced as a form of self-love, a form of selfishness or self-interest in contradiction with the interest to be shown in others or the self-sacrifice required.

Jesus loves you instead of know thyself. Self-sacrifice instead of self-love. And we’re not talking about the narcissistic self-love here, we are talking about a healthy amount of self-love that counteracts the doubts of inadequacy I was struggling with and suspect many others who are venturing off the beaten path are struggling with (heck, even people who are on the beaten path). Rather than loving ourselves, we’re supposed to love God or Jesus or both and then sacrifice ourselves in their name. Only that way do we get back a self-love substitute, God’s or Jesus’ love. No wonder that so many people flock to religions! Existential angst is part of our world – we no longer learn to counter-act it by becoming a virtuous person grounded in a deep love for and knowledge of ourselves.

Maybe if we listen to the ancients some more, we can relearn how to find our way to happiness. Maybe if we cultivate healthy self-love again, we’ll see less of the unhealthy kind, which leads to destruction both of the economy and the environment. Maybe if we reconnect with ourselves, our dreams and start knowing ourselves again, we might have to buy less stuff to fill the existential hole. The planet could sure use that kind of a value-shift. So could we.

To kick off the National Unmarried and Single Americans Week, the SF Chronicle published an article bringing together researchers and activists to talk about rights for singles and unmarried people. Bella DePaulo and Nancy Polikoff speak to their research findings from the social psychological and legal backgrounds. Nicky Grist and I talk about the activism. Well, I am just presented as the happy single who is a great example of their findings.

One of them is Rachel, a San Francisco risk consultant and bank analyst. The mother of a 17-year-old son, she was married from 1988 to 1992. After a few relationships that caused more pain than joy, she chose to be single and to blog about her marital status. “It doesn’t say anything about me, my personality or my worth other than that I’m single.”

She laughs at the idea that she’s unhappy or incomplete or immature because of her marital status. “I don’t think so.”

The interview went well beyond that, I swear! I will turn my interview prep notes into a blog post soon…

In any case, I feel honored to be included in an article with three of the greats in the singles & unmarried people movement!

I should do something today. I am just being lazy. The sun is shining and I should go outside for a long hike. Walking around the block wouldn’t be long enough. Just sitting in front of the computer is lazy. Never mind that I went on a hike yesterday. I am getting fat if I am not hyper-active every day. Okay, I am gaining weight. But that’s probably more because of those delicious desserts I’ve been eating than because of lack of activity.

Don’t get me wrong: Being active is important. But there’s no evidence that we have to work out hard every single day for 3 hours. In fact, the more and harder we work out, the higher our risk of injury. Or our risk of overtraining. I have done that without realizing it (“I am no Olympic athlete therefore I cannot overtrain,” is what I thought not acknowledging that it’s all relative…). I know that I sleep better and feel better when I work out some. But I still have the notion that I just cannot be lazy for a day. Plus, somehow writing and reading is not doing something (tell that to any author!). It is amazing what surfaces when I watch my thoughts: Unless I’ve worked out so hard that I almost faint at the end, I haven’t been active. How absurd! And how unhealthy!

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In the United States, we almost seem obsessed with finding happiness, which is rather ironic because “it is not something to be sought or pursued, but a result of how we live” (Richard Eckersley. Well & Good. 104). From early on, we are taught that we will find happiness once we’ve found our soul mate. We’ll “live happily ever after.” What gets lost in this matrimania myth is teaching on how we can create a life that invites happiness without demanding that someone else be responsible for it.

Eckersley gives us some hints based on his review of what the “wise and famous” said (104):

• Focus on others, not ourselves.
• Balance wants and means.
• Be content with what we have.

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As I was waking up this morning, in that state of not-quite-awakeness, the name Sisyphus bubbled up. Somehow the idea of dragging myself out of bed to do almost exactly the same thing I had done the day before, felt like a Sisyphean task. Noticing the beginnings of a meaning crisis (an existential depression), I forced the thought away and got up. As I woke up more fully, Sisyphus returned. This time I became intrigued: There certainly is something to our days that is very much like the myth of Sisyphus. Just like Sisyphus rolls a boulder up a hill only to have it roll down and start all over again, we do the same things day in day out. That’s called routine. And while there can be something rather comforting about it, routines contain the kernels of a meaning crisis since they have removed us from the effort of making meaning. Then I remembered something else: According to Camus’ telling of the story, Sisyphus was happy. According to Eric Maisel’s take on the story, this mythical character is happy because he “reckoned with the facts of existence” (The Van Gogh Blues, p. 99). He accepted reality, even though that reality involved that he’d be doing the same seemingly meaningless task over and over and over again. In Maisel’s words, Sisyphus forced meaning onto his existence and thus created happiness (or at least, avoided a meaning crisis). Sisyphus could roll the boulder up the hill while complaining that the boulder is too heavy, that he shouldn’t have to do this, that this is ridiculous work, that it is utterly meaningless – fighting reality. This would create unhappiness because it steals meaning from life. I know because I’ve done that way too frequently at my job. But we can do the same as Sisyphus has obviously done: defiantly deciding to be happy no matter what reality brings.

There is another message in the myth of Sisyphus, though: It takes effort. Not only is rolling a boulder up a hill difficult but maintaining a sense of contentment, let alone happiness, takes work as well. Back to my morning: I had to mentally kick myself out of bed. I had to exert an effort to refuse to be drawn down into a meaning crisis by the idea of my Sisyphean day. It took me a while. It took a lot of mental effort, a conscious choice to make meaning, to refuse to be drawn in by my negative self-talk. One thing that I find helpful in cases like this is to connect with others, including strangers, sometimes willfully faking a cheerful attitude until it takes over. As I was walking to the bus stop, still teetering close to the edge of a meaning crisis, I saw the father and son walking down the street I see on many mornings. I don’t know their names. I suspect that the father drops his toddler son off at day care. This morning, I forced myself to smile at them, to say good morning. Making an effort to smile at the first stranger I passed seemed like pushing a boulder up a mountain. The smile was answered, my effort rewarded, making the boulder just a little bit lighter to roll up the hill. Human connections are very important to me, even the small gestures toward strangers seem to help bring more joy into my life. Deep connections with friends are longer lasting and build a stronger foundation. Yet, even the small gestures help and are essential when friends are busy with other things. We cannot rely on one basket to fill our life with happiness.

Jennifer Michael Hecht writes in her book The Happiness Myth: “Happiness maintenance work is creating things to look forward to on a daily basis; arranging some peak experience for yourself occasionally; and making sure the overall story of your life has some feelings of progress and growth” (135-6). I realized this morning that the things to create daily need to be outside of our routine. The routine numbs our minds and hearts, it closes us to the opportunities to make meaning, to find happiness. We need to do something out of that routine to feel alive, the foundation of happiness. To me that out of the ordinary was a simple “good morning” to someone I had never acknowledge before. A stranger, yet not a stranger, since I see the father-son pair almost every morning. Noticing that I was wearing the same sweater that I wore yesterday because I had forgotten that I worn it just the day before, thus breaking the thou-shalt-not-wear-the-same-thing rule, helped, too. It created another opportunity to go beyond the routine and laugh at myself. Not taking life so serious is another way to get out of my routine. Slowly, the danger of a meaning crisis seems to be fading, though I am still making an effort to notice the small things that can add to my joy, just to make sure I don’t slip and fall into the hole of a crisis.

Your happiness might depend on where you live. The University of Leicester has been studying subjective well-being on a global scale and produced a World Map of Happiness. A self-described grump, Eric Weiner, used this map to travel to happy places. He studied also why these places tend to be happier. Reading the CNN book review, it sounds like one key factor is community: Weiner found that colder places forced people to cooperate more and build stronger relationships, which in turn made people happier. One of the wealthiest places on Earth, Qatar, on the other hand, is marred by distrust and isolation – not a happy place despite a population with one of the highest per capita income in the world. Another, related factor that Weiner mentions in the SFGate interview is trust: the greater the sense of trust among people, the happier the people are. Other observations, Weiner made that I find interesting: the search for happiness and the feeling of happiness seem to be inversely related. As Weiner puts it, “The happiest countries I found actually do not contemplate happiness all that much, at least not in the personal way that we do.”