Now let me get it straight from the outset that I am not
advocating that people should suffer in their life. On the contrary, I’m a great
fan of a stress-free and happy existence. However, there is a fabulous little
book of short stories by Sherril Jaffe that has been around for a million years
called ‘Scars Make Your Body More Interesting’.
Great title, eh?
This can, of course, refer to physical scars and it is true
that the aftermath of misadventure to our bodies can be a talking point. Adam
Hills (of Spicks and Specks fame) did a fantastic comedy routine in the UK in
which he talks entirely around his artificial foot. It’s hilarious and you want
to hunt it down on YouTube. Certainly, physical scars can tell us about the
resilience of some people, the human spirit and how they can keep on keeping on
against the odds, despite awful disabilities. There are some very brave people
out there.
Not sure if you’ve noticed but there is a lot of talk in
popular magazines about happiness. Certain people even talk about the
well-being or happiness of nations, in much the same way economists talk about
wealth. While this seems a little bit odd to me (how to do you measure it
accurately for a start and what does the final number really mean) it is nice
to see us talking about society as something more than an economy-which I think
is really weird, sad and commonplace.
Now, I’ve never been happy all my life so it might, indeed
be a really wonderful thing. It might lead to a huge and constant smile like
the Dalai Lama, although you’d think that he gets facial cramp from time to
time showing off those white teeth. But I think it is an unreal expectation.
Life just isn’t like that. Bad things happen to even nice people. There are a
normal set of life experiences such as the demise of loved ones, change, and
getting up at 3 am to a really smelly nappy. Things happen that wipe the smile
off our face, create uncertainty and make us think twice about how secure we
really are. And frankly it is not that secure at all, and life is a terminal
event in the normal course of things.
Apart from ordinary or bad things
happening, there are also the ups and downs that happen for unknown reasons.
Perhaps it is low sugar, hormones, a body that is not quite working in sync or
chemical imbalance. It is normal not to feel quite right, to be melancholic or
even sad from time to time.
These times also make us appreciate
how nice happiness is when the good times visit us. I mean, how else could you
make a comparison and even know when you were happy if you didn’t have the odd
sad moment. I don’t think I have ever met anyone who has been completely happy
all their life, all the time.
I think it is an unreal expectation
that we will be happy all the time, that our kids will avoid bloodied knees, that
nothing bad will happen. My experience is that people who think this have a
rude shock when misfortune occurs and find it hard to cope. There is a lot of
good evidence that we learn a lot from difficulty and become more resilient,
and the same goes for children. The point I am making is that negative
emotions, dealing with trials and tribulations is normal and maybe we try to
avoid rather than confront and overcome.
I think these bad experiences in our
life and the psychological scars they leave, make us more interesting too.
There are some great stories out there about how people won through an
emotionally difficult time. I learnt an enormous amount from listening to
patients in my consulting room. Some of them were my best teachers although my
best teacher was dealing with my own adversity.
