May 2006 | UnCommon Reader
In Defense of Unhappiness
By Larry Dossey, MD
Excerpted from The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things
The blather of Madison Avenue assures us that if we are not happy at every waking moment, there is something wrong. As physician/author Lewis Thomas, Sloan Kettering’s director of research for many years, put it, “There is an awful lot of talk these days implying that it is abnormal to be unhappy… that if you’re unhappy you ought to see a doctor… There’s a whole new profession of people who advise other people on how to live a life… this has been greatly overdone. There’s a lot of genuine mental illness… But it worries me that people, especially the young, are being brought up to believe that if they’re unhappy, they ought to see a counselor and get what’s called guidance.”
The most common way of attempting to neutralize unhappiness is not through counseling, however, but through some form of instant gratification: a shopping spree, movies, alcohol, a party or medication. Instead of trying desperately to annul our gloomy moments, could we learn to be with them, if ever so briefly?
Could we honor the contribution negative states of mind have made to the evolution of our species and to our own existence? If we did so, we might find that the unhappy feelings would lighten of their own accord.
What have we lost in the rush to obliterate our melancholy moments? Are we losing the toughness needed to survive in a turbulent world by expecting always to be “blissed out” and serene? If the edge in the high-stakes game of survival belongs to the best-prepared and the most resilient — and if tolerance for unhappiness fosters these very abilities — we may be in for some rude surprises.
Today, people speak of happiness as if it is a right. Our country’s founding fathers took a different view. In the Declaration of Independence, they defended the pursuit of happiness, not happiness per se. They saw happiness as an ideal — something of great value, something to be realized if only we are wise enough — which is a much different attitude than the one that prevails today.
Unhappiness and Spirituality
Many great wisdom traditions have regarded unhappiness and suffering as steps toward wisdom. Mythologist Joseph Campbell affirmed this view, stating that human beings become wise in two ways. They may experience a sudden, unbidden revelation — an epiphany or “instant enlightenment” — or they may suffer, which is far more common. To limit unhappiness, therefore, is to block one of the major pathways towards wisdom. And if the suffering is fully entered and engaged, it can be transformed, as many wise spiritual teachers maintained.
An example comes from the life of Sri Ramana Maharishi, perhaps the most beloved saint of modern India. Maharishi was afflicted with cancer at the end of his life, and he would cry out in pain at night. His screams often prevented those who had come to study at his ashram from sleeping. Some of his devotees, wanting to put the best possible face on things, insisted that their teacher was not really in pain, but was using “yogic control.” On hearing this rationale, Maharishi objected. “There is pain,” he explained, “but there is no suffering” — a reminder that pain and serenity can coexist, and are not required to annihilate each other.
A Challenge to Healers
If unhappiness plays a positive role in life, it does not mean that more is always better. Excessive melancholy can shade into depression, which can overwhelm and destroy. But just as we can have too much unhappiness, we can also have too little. Life needs to push back; we need resistance if we are to build strength and stamina on the mental as well as the physical plane.
It is easy to criticize the tendency in modern culture to rid ourselves of unpleasantness through the mindless consumption of material luxuries and, when this doesn’t work, to complete the job by altering our consciousness with alcohol, drugs and other chemicals. It is also easy to castigate modern medicine for doing the same through the wholesale prescription of tranquilizing medications.
Moreover, therapists who use alternative or complementary forms of treatment often fall into the same trap. “Natural” therapies can be used as vigorously as pharmaceuticals to eradicate pain and unpleasantness. Alternative therapists, no less than orthodox clinicians, need to make a place in their conceptual models for suffering and unhappiness.
All of us physicians, whether conventional or alternative, must resist the reflex tendency to obliterate every ounce of discomfort for those we serve. We ought to help our patient-clients explore the role of unpleasantness in their lives, and we must be patient while this process proceeds at its own pace. Above all, we should resist equating healing with feeling good. This is a difficult lesson for healers; we prefer that our patients always be happy. But unless we understand the place of unhappiness in the lives of those we serve, we shall have to endure more unhappiness ourselves, for that is the price always paid for severing the wholeness that is healing.
Excerpted from The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things by Larry Dossey, MD, ©2006 by Larry Dossey, MD. Published by Harmony Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
Illustration by John Mavroudis
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