Two sentences out of my email last night to a friend:
I THOUGHT I WAS DIFFERENT. OH. MY. FUCKING. GOD.
I’m not even bothering to censor that. I typed it as you see it – all caps and everything.
Since April, I have been experiencing a cascade of revelations, an internal psychological Flood of Biblical proportions.
Christian analogies aside, I thought I was living in a world, a body, a mind that was a certain way, did certain things, did not do certain other things, and was, on the whole, rather unique and different from all other worlds, bodies and minds – not only different from those I know, but different from all that ever lived or ever will live.
WRONG.
Let me say that again: WRONG.
Now let me get personal: I WAS SO WRONG.
It started when I did that piece of The Work on “work” with Steven that I blogged about. That somehow reminded me of a sentence stem we often use for The Work: “I’m a person who . . . (fill in the blank)” I started questioning all the “I’m a person who . . . ” sentences I noticed.
You know the ones:
I’m a person who makes X amount of money, does X type of work, likes coffee-flavored ice cream, and hates green peppers. Yeah, any and all of them. They are all fodder for self-revelation. Try it. You’ll like it. At least, the results of the inquiry are likely to be quite freeing. And isn’t that what we were after?
I realized that if life is a school, I was (from some perspectives) flunking some basic courses (you know – money, relationships, career – little things.) If life is a game, I was losing. If life is a play, I had a tragedy. And that NONE of that was necessary.
In fact, I have had the answers to the tests; the rulebook & the moves; the script and the score, for over 20 years now. It is no secret. (It’s not even “the” Secret.)
But I was different. Those didn’t apply to me.
You may be thinking the same thing about what I just wrote. I can’t stop you. But read on. Ask some questions. See what you find.
Why is it that we still have things we call “problems” or “issues” or “patterns” or . . . anything we go to therapists and self-help books and ministers and religious texts and weekend – even week-long and longer – seminars to try to “fix?”
Why?
Why, when people give us answers, even answers they say worked for them, do we not “solve” the “problem” and get on with laying in hammocks and smelling roses and enjoying the Darjeeling?
Okay, I’ll admit there is more than one correct answer to the question. In fact, it will probably take at least 3 answers to get a fuller picture. I’ll tell you what they are:
1. The people we paid for “answers” were wrong about what actually worked.
2. “Problems” are a feature not a bug.
3. We . . . I don’t know how to tell you this . . . we, each of us, is no different from anyone else – at least not in any way that would prevent us from “solving” “problems.”
I know. It’s a hard pill to swallow. It makes no sense at first.
There’s just one tiny little - majorly important – fact – about this: it’s true.
So, let’s look at the first answer: the people we paid for answers are also . . . wrong.
Because memory is reconstructed from fragments, not saved en toto like a video, but with many additions, deletions and distortions – nothing is as we recall it – not even the well-intentioned interpretations of those who want to teach us how to “solve” a “problem.”
Daniel Gilbert’s book, Stumbling on Happiness, contains explanations and more, with pages and pages of footnotes documenting the research. I just finished reading it, and none too soon! Get one. There are 130 used copies on Amazon starting at $4.50. With shipping, it costs less than a lot of us will spend on lunch today (another topic I’ve been questioning – my “latte factor” see David Bach’s book Smart Couples Finish Rich, but I digress.)
The point is – because of the way our minds work when looking at the past to see what “worked,” we will invariably misunderstand and reconstruct it in some way it ain’t never been. Then, because we may have had some success since then, and because we have a charismatic personality (or a good agent) we get to sell books & seminars and go on Oprah to tell everyone what we mis-remember that didn’t actually work.
When it doesn’t work for everyone, we tell them they didn’t hold their mouths right – that ain’t it.
According to the research in Gilbert’s book, the only time we can get reliable data from someone about what is making them happy is in the middle of the experience. He says that we can, and should, use this as a guide for our choices, but only if we want to have the most reliable answers possible. Otherwise, we can continue to count on mis-remembered and mis-reported and misunderstood memories from those who are trying to sell us something.
The second correct answer is a variation on the “That’s not a bug; it’s a feature” wisdom from computer geekdom.
Problems: Bug or feature?
Well, we all have them. They are built-in. We have them regularly. They don’t stop. Even those who have achieved what we think we want have had them – in abundance!
So. Bug or feature?
Feature.
Definitely.
Get used to it.
If these ideas intrigue you at all, if you’ve ever spent a dime to solve some personal issue – then spend these dimes to see what Gilbert says would actually work. And there is always the libarary.
I’ll bet you still won’t do it. Why?
Well, let me tell you:
This is the kicker, yet another truth that set me free, another answer I didn’t want to hear, another perspective that might have saved me 3 decades of ignorance, that I was finally suddenly able to accept after Gilbert’s book and Sashen’s classes and the Conspiracy of the Universe led me, as they say, “kicking and screaming into my bliss”
I AM NO DIFFERENT FROM ANYONE ELSE
- not in any way that matters when I want to know how to be happy.
I breathe air.
I eat food.
I walk on 2 legs, have one head, 2 arms, 10 toes, 10 fingers, keep going . . .
I laugh. I cry. I shit. I die.
I want what everyone else wants, and I get it the same way anyone else would.
Considering the landscape of human experience, and I mean the WHOLE landscape, the basics of being human, the things I have held tightly to, the things that kept me so blind, are the tiniest fraction of my entire reality as a human being.
Mostly, I am just like you.
And as I wrote to the Right Reverend Doctor Mr. Sashen last night (really, someone should give this man an honorary doctorate – in life):
I am humbled & amazed.
I’m so in love with the whole thing that I can hardly contain myself.
I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes again.
Love, Ann
PS – I was looking for a closing quote and I found a great review of Gilbert’s book with an interview:
http://www.powells.com/authors/danielgilbert.html
Oh, and here’s a quote, from Daniel Gilbert in the above link:
“I can guarantee you that half the things in Stumbling on Happiness will turn out to be false. The beauty of science is that we just keep stumbling along, slowly accumulating facts that we can rely on. I’m talking about a lot of very new research. A lot of it is mine. There may be fifteen or twenty scientists working on related problems, and I’ve talked about their work, but until we have decades of research on this, with hundreds if not thousands of scientists working on the same problem, we won’t know which parts are right and which are wrong.”
– Daniel Gilbert
