We are what we do

 

We are what we do….

 

I remember talking to a friend who is a psychiatrist and he told me how people often come to him asking for medication. They are tired of their sad mod, fatigue, and lost of interests in things that previously gave them pleasure. They are having trouble sleeping or they sleep all the time; their appetites are absent or excessive. They are irritable and their memories are shot. He even said often they wish they were dead. They have trouble remembering what it is to be happy.

 

He listens to their stories..and he said..after listening to all those stories..with recurrent themes of relationships in conflict, unsatisfying jobs, and boredom he says he gives them some advice.

 

I remember what he said since it always stuck with me: The good news is that we have effective treatments for the symptoms of depression; the bad news is that medication will not make you happy. Happiness is not simply the absence of despair. It is an affirmative state in which our lives have both meaning and pleasure.

 

So think there was a lot of profound truth in above statement and yes medication alone is seldom enough. People also need to look at the way they are living with an eye to change. We are always talking about what we want, what we intend. These are dreams and wishes that have little value in changing our mood. We are nt what we think, or what we say or how we feel. We are what we do. Conversely in judging other people we need to pay attention not to what they promise but to how they behave. This simple rule I have found could prevent much of the pain and misunderstanding that infect human relationships. “When all is said and done, more is said than done.” We are drowning in words, many of which turn out to be lies we tell ourselves or others. How many times do we feel betrayed and surprised at the disconnect between people’s words and their actions before we learn to pay more attention to the latter than the former? Most of the heartbreak that life contains is a result of ignoring the reality that past behaviour is the most reliable predictor of future behaviour.

 

Woody Allen said once that “Eighty percent of life is showing up.” We demonstrate courage in the numberless small ways in which we meet our obligations or reach out to try the new things that might improve our lives. Many of us are afraid of the risk and prefer the bland, the predictable and the repetitive. This explains in part I think the overwhelming sense of boredom that is a defining characteristic of our age. The frantic attempts to overcome the ennui take the form for the constant thirst for Hollywood entertainment and stimulation (music, TV, Ipods, etc.) in the end, much of which is devoid of meaning. It is the answer to the question “Why?” that weighs most heavily upon us. Why are we here? Why do we choose the lives we do? Why bother? The despairing answer is contained in a popular bumper sticker I saw recently that said” Whatever”. A simple word encapsulating a viewpoint on life.

 

I think in general we get not what we deserve but what we expect. Ask a successful hitter in baseball about what he thinks about when he gets up to bat and you hear something like : “I am going to get a solid hit!” If you point out that the best hitters in the game make an out two of the three times they get up to bat, any good player will say, “Yeah but this is my time.”

 

So if I were to define happiness I would say that the three components of happiness are something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to. Think about it. If you have useful work sustained relationships and the promise of pleasure, it is very hard to be unhappy. I use the term “work” to encompass any activity, paid or unpaid, that gives you a sense of personal significance. If we have a compelling avocation that lends meaning to our lives, that is our work. It is a tribute to the diversity of human life that people can find pleasure and meaning in pursuing mediocrity on the golf course or at the bridge table. Think about traffic problems in life if we all liked the same thing.  

 

Much is made of the presumed difficulty in defining “love”. Because the basis for this feeling is myseterious (Why do I love this person and not someone else?), it is assumed that these words cannot encompass what it means to love another. What about this definition (G’s aside..but hey could be wrong..have been before lol) ? We love someone when the importance of his or her needs and desires rise to the level of our own. In the best cass, of course, our concern for the welfare of another exceeds, or becomes indistinguishable from, what we want for ourselves. An operational question I sometimes use when consulting with a friend if they really love someone is, “ Would you take a bullet for this person?” I know it may be an extreme standard since few of us  are required to confront such a sacrifice and none of us can say with certainty what we would do if our desire for self preservation collided with our love for another. But just imaging the situation can clarify the nature of our attachments.

 

The number of people we would consider sacrificing ourselves to save is very limited: our children, certainky; our spouse or other “loved one”, maybe. But if we cannot contemplate this gift, how can we pretend that we love them? More commonly, feelings of love or the lack of it are noticeable in all the mundane ways we show that someone matters to us, especially in the amount and quality of the time we are willing to give them.

 

The point is that love is demonstrated behaviorially. Once again we define who we are and who and what we care about, not by what we promise, but by what we do.We are a verbal species, much given to the use of words to explain-and deceive. The worse deceptions, of course, are those we practice on ourselves. What we choose to believe is closely related to deeply felt needs-for example, the dream we all carry around inside us of perfect love, unqualified acceptance of the sort available only from a good mother. This desire makes us vulnerable to the worst forms of self-deception and disillusionment, an indulgence of hope that we have at last found the person who will endlessly love us exactly as we are.

 

When therefore, somenone purports to do so and says the words we so long to hear, it is not surprising that we might choose to ignore incongruent behaviors. When I hear someone say,”He does inconsiderate things, but I know he loves me,” I usually wonder if it possible to intentionally hurt someone we love. Would we do such a thing to ourselves? Can we love that big truck that runs us over…lol?

 

The other thing that true love requires of us is the courage to become fully vulnerable to another. The risks are obvious. Who has not had their heart lacerated by a mistake in judging the person to whom we gave this trust? Such wounds are the basis for much of the cynicism about love that pervades relationships and produces the competitive games that frustrate our efforts to have faith in each other.

 

Often people alternate between the extremes of loneliness and self deception. Somewhere in the middle lies the best chance at happiness. Finally, we are entitled to receive only that which we are preparded to give. This is why there is truth to the adage that we all get marriage/life partners we deserve, and why most of our dissatisfactions with others reflect limitations in ourselves.