In many ways life is
a battle.
A battle against our
self-destructive tendencies, our weaknesses and fears.
A battle
against our mortal nature and the limits of time.
A battle
against bad habits and people who try to pull us down.
And depending on the
period of history in which we live, a
battle for our freedom
against enslavement by tyrants.
But lest this
conception of life bring us down, we should also recognize that
full participation in the battle of life is what produces
meaning and fulfillment.
For as Jung notes,
life is hard,
there is nothing that can be done about this, but we can
choose how we face up to the battle of life and depending on
our chosen approach the hard life can become a good life.
In this video (far
below) we will explore how to achieve this ultimate of feats.
To prepare for battle, knowledge of the conditions is essential
and in the battle of life the defining feature is change. The
state of the outer world, the inner world of our psyche and the
interaction between the two are forever in flux.
The process of aging
slowly alters how we experience life and death forever changes
the set of people who populate our world.
What is more, life is
punctuated by the unforeseen and unpredictable. Cruel twists of
fate and remarkable opportunities radically, and sometimes
rapidly, rupture the entire fabric of our being.
And so, as life is
defined by change, successful navigation of the battle of life
requires above all else the ability to adapt, or as the great
military strategist Sun Tzu wrote:
"Water shapes its
course according to the nature of the ground over which it
flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the
foe whom he is facing.
Therefore, just
as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are
no constant conditions.
He who can modify
his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed
in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain."
Sun Tzu
The Art of War
The importance of
adapting to the constant change of life, and modifying tactics
to suit each new challenge, becomes evident when we look at
individuals who lack this ability, individuals, in other words,
who are defined by their psychological and behavioral rigidity.
Rigidity, in thought
or action, almost guarantees failure in the battle of life.
For when we are
overly set in our ways, our options in the face of change are
limited. We can try to apply our old ways to new challenges, but
this only works if the challenge is not too novel.
Alternatively, we can flee from our battles, deny they exist, or
try to avoid them.
But the more we avoid
life's challenges, the less we live and as Carl Jung wrote:
"Unlived life
is a
destructive, irresistible force
that works
softly but inexorably."
Carl
Jung
Civilization
in Transition
To be one of the few who truly lives, rather than merely exists,
we must be willing to face up to our battles with the adaptivity
that best promotes success.
But how can we begin
to live like this?
How, in other words, can we escape the
laziness and fear that keeps so many people locked in rigid
ways?
One approach is
through the re-ordering of our sense of self so as to replace
what is called a constructed self with a discovered self.
To understand what
type of self defines us we should ask the following question:
"Is [our]
self-concept based upon our job title, income level,
physical attributes, age, educational level, the present
location of [our] home, the car [we] drive, or having
important friends?"
Al
Siebert
The Resiliency Advantage
If we answer this
question in the affirmative, then we have a constructed sense of
self...
Our self-concept, in
other words, is built, or constructed upon, the attainment of
external goods and values and while this form of self is very
common in the modern world, it is far from ideal, for as the
philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer explains:
"The ordinary man
places his life's happiness in things external to him, in
property, rank, wife and children, friends, society, and the
like, so that when he loses them or finds them
disappointing, the foundation of his happiness is destroyed.
In other words,
his center of gravity is not in himself; it is constantly
changing its place, with every wish and whim."
Schopenhauer
The Wisdom of Life
When our self-concept
is tied to external things then the order of our self mirrors
the order of the outer world.
When that order is
stable so too is our sense of self. But, when that order breaks
down, perhaps from an economic, social or personal crisis, then
those with a constructed self also tend to breakdown.
To avoid the
vulnerability of a constructed self we need to replace it with a
discovered self...
A discovered self is
cultivated through the development of virtues, skills, character
traits, and other personal capacities rather than being
constructed upon external achievements.
This sense of self is
discovered in that it is who we become as we actualize our
latent potentials and develop our unique capacities in
interaction with the world and as Al Siebert explains:
"Resiliency comes
from a discovered self, not a constructed self.
It comes
from the gradual emergence of your unique, inborn abilities
in a process called individuation.
The better you
become, the more unique you become as an individual - and it
never ends...
If your identity
is based mostly on external factors, you will feel anxious
about change that threatens your identity sources.
You will try to
keep the world around you frozen in place.
If your identity
is based on your personal qualities, abilities, and values,
you can let parts of your world dissolve away without
feeling threats to your existence.
With a strong
inner sense of who you are, you can easily adapt to and
thrive in new environments."
Al
Siebert
The Resiliency Advantage
A discovered self is
far more effective in the battle of life for two main reasons:
-
firstly, the
inner order to which it is anchored is far more stable,
and under our control, than the outer order of the
constructed self.
-
secondly, a
discovered self is far more adaptive as the process that
leads to its emergence, namely self-development, imbues
us with all sorts of skills and capacities that can be
used to confront life's battles.
Michel de
Montaigne, a 16th century philosopher, was a man
who spent much of his life in active pursuit of a discovered
self and the following passage could easily serve as the ethos
for the rest of us who want to follow on this path:
"Not being able
to govern events, I govern myself, and if they will not
adapt to me, I adapt to them."
Montaigne
Of Presumption
The surest way to the
cultivation of a discovered self is to find a life purpose or
mission and to orient our days around its pursuit.
A purpose can be any
meaningful long-term goal that promotes human flourishing. It
can be a creative goal such as mastering a craft or skill, a
practical goal such as starting a business, or a courageous goal
such as devoting ourselves to a culturally important value such
as freedom.
But whatever we
choose, our purpose must be challenging and inspiring, and it
should be chosen by us, not for us...
When we find a purpose and begin living the purposeful life our
discovered self begins to emerge. For with a purpose we are
confronted daily with new tasks and challenges and so we create
an ideal training ground for our self-development.
When we live with
purpose, in other words, we expand our skills and capacities
voluntarily, not only when forced to, and in the process we
actualize our potentials and unearth the discovered self.
While some may view the call to live with purpose as cliché, in
actual fact in can be a matter of sanity versus madness or even
life versus death.
This point was
stressed by the Dutch doctor and author
Joost Meerloo who
lived through the Nazi invasion of Holland and was a member of
the anti-Nazi resistance.
Meerloo spent time
studying the psychological effects of being a prisoner of a
concentration camp.
As he notes, most
people when plucked from their homes and shipped to prison
merely for reasons of political corruption and human cruelty do
not cope well.
But as he further
points out, there are some individuals who not only endure such
conditions, but can even be said to flourish in spite of them,
and integral to this astonishing ability is living with a
purpose, or what Meerloo calls in the following passage, a
mission or inner goal:
"When we look at
the varieties of human behavior under extreme and pressing
circumstances, we see how easily man can be subdued, and at
the same time we see that certain factors seem to have a
positive effect on his morale, keeping him from despair and
collapse.
When these
factors are operative, the spirit revives and people are
enabled to live with integrity in spite of dangerous
circumstances.
There are many such morale boosters...
Perhaps the most
effective is the sense of having some mission and inner
goal.
This ideal with which a man identifies can be love of
the native land, love of freedom or justice, or even the
thought of hate and revenge.
Whatever it is,
at the moment of calamity a guiding idea is as much needed
as mere physical strength and endurance."
Joost
Meerloo
The Rape of the Mind
The psychologist
Viktor Frankl who spent time in a Nazi concentration camp
echoes Meerloo's observations.
Frankl went so far as
to say that for him and his fellow prisoners, a purpose was the
difference between life and death. Without a purpose or a
"future goal" to look forward to, prisoners found it very
difficult to endure the uncertainty and brutal conditions of
camp life.
Frankl notes that
many purposeless individuals succumbed to what he called
"give-up-itis".
One morning, they
simply refused to get up, and as he wrote:
"At that moment
we knew that for the next forty-eight hours or so we would
watch them dying."
Viktor
Frankl
Man's Search for Meaning
While hopefully, we
will not be a generation forced to endure the brutalities of
government prison camps, what the future has in store for us is
never known.
Social uncertainty is
clouding our future, tyranny is intensifying across the globe,
and our ability to live free and economically prosperous lives
is under grave threat.
And so while living
with a purpose and cultivating a discovered self is a wise
choice even at times of social stability, as it promotes
greatness of self, in our generation it may be the difference
between thriving in tumultuous times versus merely suffering in
response to the chaos that swirls around us:
"If there is any
period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of
Revolution,
when the old
and the new stand side by side and admit of being
compared?
when the
energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope?
when the
historic glories of the old can be compensated by the
rich possibilities of the new era?
This time, like
all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do
with it."
Ralph
Waldo Emerson
The American
Scholar
