Читать книгу Why Smart People Hurt - Eric Maisel - Страница 14

Each of us comes into the world with a unique mix of aptitudes, characteristics, inclinations, genetic information, aspects of temperament, and other qualities and capacities that in natural psychology we call “original personality.” You are not born a blank slate; no parent believes that nor does anyone who has seen a litter of kittens. Your original personality includes everything from your native intelligence to your basic mood structure and all those aspects of temperament (like adaptability, sensitivity, and distractibility) that developmental psychologists study.

There was a time when people thought that fully a quarter of the human race was born melancholic. It is not unreasonable to suppose that people are born happier or sadder, just as they are born smarter or less smart. Likewise, it is reasonable to suppose that each individual is already born with a certain worldview—or primed for a certain worldview. Probably we are born with sets of both qualities and capacities and also with a unique blueprint—one that may haunt us as a ghostly memory if and when life deflects us from who we might have been or who we ought to have been.

There is nothing surprising about the idea that we are born with an original personality. What is surprising is that, except for a very limited exploration of that cluster of traits known in psychology as temperament—an exploration that, by the way, the helping side of psychology makes almost no use of—all psychologies have avoided thinking about original personality. Psychology does not credit human beings with an original personality or take it into account when psychologists diagnose and treat their clients or patients. Doesn't it matter whether or not the person across from you came into the world already naturally sad if you are going to pin on him the label of clinically depressed? Of course it does.

Picture a litter of kittens. One is more curious than the next. One is more aggressive than the next. One is a leader, and another is a follower. The first is not potentially curious; she is already curious. The second is not potentially aggressive; he is already aggressive. The third and the fourth are not potentially leaders and followers; they are already that. In exactly the same way a human infant is not potentially smart; he is already smart. True, he doesn't have language yet; true, his environment can dumb him down; true, he can't write War and Peace or solve quadratic equations. But he is already built a certain way and already looks out at life with a particular mind-set and apparatus.

A smart person is smart right from the beginning.

Then comes the environment. The child looks out at the world with his original personality, interacts with the world according to his original personality, and has his developmental blueprint altered by the world, producing his formed personality. He forms or doesn't form secure attachments, his world is safer or more dangerous, he sees an array of options or few options, and so on. To take a simple analogy, our curious kitten in a loving household becomes a gentle cat but if thrown out into the world, becomes feral. Her curiosity manifests one way in that loving home and another way if she must fend for herself in back alleys. In one environment, it keeps her amused; in another, it helps her kill.

To say this simply, a person's original personality is altered into his formed personality through the circumstances of living. This complex alteration may produce a weakened or a strengthened person, a smarter or a less smart person, an open or a defended person, and so on. Your formed personality may be more than as well as less than your original personality, or more in some regards and less in others. Maybe you were born selfish—not so unusual for a creature with selfish genes—and nevertheless learned generosity. Or maybe your selfishness grew into everyday narcissism. Either is possible, although it is rather the rule that for most people their formed personality will be less than their original personality, since living is a hard game that tends not to bring out the best in us.

All the while, some free personality remains available to us. To use the language of natural psychology, we are born with an original personality, grow into our formed personality through living, and retain available personality—that amount of awareness that allows us to make changes, see our formed personality for what it is, make guesses about our original personality, and, most importantly, set a meaning-making agenda. It is with our available personality that we say, “I am not a slave to my upbringing, and I can make myself proud through my efforts.”

You may have been born sad, and life may have made you sadder: it is with your available personality that you deal with that reality.

You may have been born anxious, and life may have made you more anxious: it is with your available personality that you deal with that reality.

You may have been born smart and forced into dumb work: it is with your available personality that you deal with that reality.

The more defensive you are, the less your available personality. The more addicted you are, the less your available personality. The less you think for yourself, the less your available personality. The more the engine of your brain has gone off racing on its own, the less your available personality. The more you've succumbed to one lure or another—we'll examine four lures later on: the lures of language, logic, fantasy, and mysticism—the less your available personality. The more you are being fooled or ruled, the less your available personality.

In short, we may possess much less available personality than we wish we had—and we may know that and experience that as pain.

The following report from Maxine does a lovely job of tying some of these themes together. Maxine explained:

I've done animal rescue for years. Currently I have a feral cat and her litter of three kitties in my attic. It took almost three months for me to see the kitties because she's taught them that the sight and sound of humans is a dangerous thing. I know that I have only their available personality to work with, which even after just a few months is a very fixed and reduced amount. I bet if I could've handled them within days of their being born and played with them in the early weeks, they would've expressed their original personality to me. But as it is, their mama did what she considers a mighty fine job at forming their personalities; and she has very limited skills herself. So every day I just show up, I work with what's available, and original and formed don't really matter. I meet them where they are. There's a beauty in that simplicity and a real honoring of these cats.

But it's all very different when it comes to me. When it comes to dealing with rescue animals with behavior problems, I accept that they have only what's available. It's the sanest approach, because thinking about their lost innocence or what they might have been is devastating to me, and I don't need to be devastated. But if I think about me—or about a friend or a family member—I can't maintain that same neutrality. I grieve for what's been lost. I rebel at the idea that this is all that's left or that this is all that's available. I see and feel the diminishment.

Why do I lose the beauty and simplicity of saying, “Hey, here's what's available today?” Why do I feel paralyzed when I begin thinking about what I should have been or about what life should have been? The idea of available personality goes from feeling useful, simple, and beautiful when it comes to working with rescue animals to feeling like a prison sentence when I apply it to me. I bet I'm not the only one who feels this way. It may be true that we only have so much available personality left to us, but I don't really find that truth acceptable.

A child is born; he is already somebody. To pick one set of circumstances, let's say that he is a bright boy born into a middle-class family that demands good grades and promotes a worldview that includes playing musical instruments, playing sports, admiring nature, going to college, and getting a good job.

The parents pay lip service to the idea that thinking is a good thing but do not do much thinking themselves and do not really like it when their son thinks. They pay lip service to the idea that family members should love one another but don't love much and aren't very warm or friendly. They likewise pay lip service to the ideals of freedom but present their son with the clear message that he is not free to get mediocre grades, not free to dispute their core beliefs, and not free to really be himself.

Of course, this all confuses him. In this environment, he becomes sadder than he was born to be, saddened by having to perform at piano recitals that don't interest him and that make him woefully anxious, saddened by having to take his boring classes seriously, saddened by his parents' inability to love him or take an interest in him, saddened by what he learns in school about how human beings treat one another, and saddened most of all by his inability to make sense of this picture of life—a picture that everyone seems to be holding as the way to live but that to him feels odd, contradictory, empty, and meaningless.

His anxiety at piano recitals is noticed, and he is put on antianxiety medication. His restlessness in class is noticed, and he is put on anti-ADHD medication. His sadness is noticed, and he is put on antidepressants. Now, to go along with his sense that this can't really be the way that life is supposed to feel or be lived, he has three mental disorder labels and three sets of medications that make him a perpetual patient and that produce all sorts of side effects. Everyone in his family seems to think that it is normal that he has three mental disorders—they, of course, all have theirs as well.

Then come his teenage years. Teenagers in first-world countries are underutilized by their society and strangled by the nothingness of school. No amount of tennis lessons, spring vacations, camping trips, or extracurricular activities—including sex, drugs, and rock and roll—can fill the void created by having nothing asked of them. There are only two solutions to this epidemic problem that causes the havoc of Columbine High tragedies, anorexia, teenage suicide, careless sex, video game addiction, social media frenzy, brand name fixation, and deep sadness—that society ask something of its teenagers or that teenagers ask something of themselves. But nothing is asked of this young man except that he do what he is told to do and that he get ready for college.

Somewhere along the line, he begins to have feelings about what work he might like to do and what work he doesn't want to do. His parents—troubled themselves, anxious themselves, with their own opinions and agendas—add their input and try to influence his decision. Since he seems to like biology, why shouldn't he become a doctor? He shrugs, not wanting to think about the future; what he really wants to do is listen to music, watch movies, spend time with his friends, and find a girlfriend.

College comes, and he is obliged to act like he is deciding about his future. His classes are not meaningful to him, and he has trouble not wallowing in sadness. He manages to graduate, and the part-time job he takes one summer as an intern in a large corporation leads oddly and inexorably to a full-time, entry-level job in the corporate world. His early twenties pass in a characteristic haze of happy hour drinking, escapades and infatuations, office politics, and relentless sadness.

In his mid-twenties, he gets lucky. At that point, having had to survive the consequences of his environmental challenges and his own spotty past, he comes into contact with a psychology like natural psychology that alerts him to the fact that the place he has arrived is rather to be expected. Now he has a pivotal choice to make: whether or not to make use of his available personality to reduce his distress and begin making meaning.

He begins to see that the language of natural psychology—in which we talk about original personality, formed personality, and available personality; about meaning investments and meaning opportunities; about the unfortunate but completely normal (as opposed to abnormal or disordered) consequences of environmental challenges, and about distress relief rather than diagnosis and treatment for mental disorders—can help him think about what is now required of him if he is to reduce his distress and right his ship.

He readies himself to deal with all of this. But there is still the problem of his meaningless work. It is one thing to accept the challenge of making meaning, but how exactly does that relate to the world of work? A serious challenge that loomed early on and grew more pressing as he moved from high school through college and into his young adult years was the necessity of choosing a line of work. What young person understands that jobs and professions do not exist to serve his meaning needs and that whatever choice he makes is unlikely to really satisfy? Now he is beginning to understand that.

Challenged to feel less sad, challenged to deal with what is at once an inflated and deflated sense of himself, challenged to actually manifest his smartness, and in pain on many fronts despite his new understanding of life, he must still pay the rent and buy groceries. As much as he might like to, he can't put the matter of work on a back burner. He is forced to grapple with that tedious, slippery, unrelenting challenge that we look at next: the world of work.