oldchakra.com

[Reprinted from WebMD Medical News]
When Will It Be OK to Be Happy?

'Normal' Life Expected to Mean
Different Things for Different People
By Daniel DeNoon

WebMD Medical News

Sept. 17, 2001 — A nation whose heart still bleeds grieves its losses. As we survivors begin to resume our lives, we wonder: What will normal life look like in post-disaster America? When can we be happy again?

"There is no moral or ethical injunction against being happy — as long as you learn something from this," psychologist and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, PhD, tells WebMD. "It's all right to be happy if you are grateful about the life you have — and if you are not just sorry about what happened but are ready to make a commitment to make the world safer for the future."

Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced CHICK-sent-me-high-ee) is a professor of psychology at California's Claremont Graduate University. Formerly chairman of the department of psychology at the University of Chicago, his distinguished lifetime work is the study of human creativity, happiness, satisfaction, and fulfillment. Among his best-selling works is Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, which the Wall Street Journal has called one of six essential books for business leaders.

It's hard not to feel guilty about enjoying the pleasures of life while the lives of so many others are shattered. We may smile, but as yet only through our tears.

"What we have had this week is this massive collective grief," clinical psychologist Christopher M. Peterson, PhD, tells WebMD. "There is no normal way to grieve; there is unbelievable variation. Some get over it very quickly; some never get over it. Some are very emotional; some are quiet. The advice is this: there is no blueprint for getting back to normal. People should find what is comfortable for them and let others find what makes them comfortable. There is no need to chastise others for enjoying themselves."

Peterson, a professor at the University of Michigan, is one of the leaders of the positive psychology movement. Positive psychology, he says, looks at what is good about the human condition. It studies the qualities that make life worth living.

"Life is already going on — and it is going on in a very stirring way," Peterson says. "I have heard as many good stories as bad stories coming out of the events of last week — stories of courage and kindness and compassion."

As part of his research, Peterson studies the strengths of people's character, using an Internet-based test. The results are still preliminary, but there's been an interesting trend. People responding since Sept. 11 report more spiritual feelings, more feelings of love, and more feelings of hope than they did before that infamous day.

"Terrible events like this present us with a choice," Peterson says. "We can choose to respond with understanding and mercy and tolerance. Or we can decide to respond in a bad way. This is a choice. We choose good character. We choose virtues. This is an opportunity."

It is an opportunity that Americans must seize if they are to make the world a better place, Csikszentmihalyi says.

"One should not be oblivious — that is the real danger, to assume that nothing happened or that things will return to as they were before," he says. "The danger is denial that can set in."

Csikszentmihalyi is worried about the consequences of seeking revenge rather than change.

"We are focusing on retribution and not understanding, and that worries me," he says. "If we focus on where hatred comes from and how to make it go away, we wouldn't be talking about retribution only. I hope this will end in the fact that the wonderful sense of togetherness America has shown will include other countries in the world. The best outcome is not only global policing but also global responsibility. Unless we find this type of balance, we are going to always have people who want to destroy us."

It's been said that America has lost its innocence. Peterson disagrees.

"I've heard this phrase 'loss of innocence,'" he says. "All you have to do is watch MTV to know we aren't an innocent people. What we have lost is the sense of safety — and that might be a permanent loss."

If this is true — and it certainly seems to be — what will a return to normal look like?

"What we had before — in the sense that people felt like, basically, nothing could go wrong — was not normal. It was really unusual," Csikszentmihalyi says. "In human history, we have never been in a position for long where we could feel secure. The plagues that used to devastate the world would often come one or two a generation and decimate the population. Despite that, people were able to create new, important advances. We will need to be creative and make progress in spite of the fact that we now know life is fragile — in spite of the fact that we now know civilization is fragile. That is a much more mature way of living than expecting that everything will be fine."

Medically Reviewed By Charlotte Grayson

Reprinted on CHAKRA 23 September 2001

Go to the “Other News Page”

HOME

Other News

You are here