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We
are pleased to present the following
excerpt from the book
Happiness Is.:
Unexpected Answers to Practical Questions
in Curious Times
by Shawn Christopher Shea,
M.D.
HCI - October
2004
Chapter
2
The
Tense Young Man Who
Didn't Know That He Already
Knew
The trouble with being in the
rat race is that even if you win, you're
still a rat. -- Lilly Tomlin,
comedienne
The Rat Made Flesh
Buddhas, saints, prophets, and
self-help gurus are madly popping up about
us like mushrooms after a summer rain.
Like mushrooms some are pretty, some are
interesting, most are benign, and a few
are poisonous. They are winking at us from
nearly every page on Amazon.com and
pitching their wares at us on almost every
flickering TV channel. No doubt much
wisdom can be gained from these sources if
the foolish chaff and commercialism is
screened out by our intelligent
understanding of how books and media
work.
From spiritual gurus peering out with a
winning smile from seemingly every
bookshelf in Barnes and Noble to pop
psychologists manning the mikes with hot
shot advice on the talk show circuits,
spiritual and psychological wisdom is
readily available. Such contemporary
sound-bite wisdom is as ubiquitous today
as indulgences used to be in the
Renaissance Catholic Church, and with the
same stipulation - money. We buy wisdom
today like churchgoers used to buy
indulgences, with cold hard
cash.
Curiously, even though I have learned a
tremendous amount from my readings in
philosophy, religion, and self help, for
which I am truly grateful, the most
powerful bits of wisdom have come from the
most unlikely of sources - everyday people
who have managed to survive life's
difficulties with some type of unassuming
gracefulness. My best buddhas have often
been those who did not know they were a
buddha. And their wisdom came free. It was
a wisdom that, born of pure hard earned
experience, held the promise of pure
hard-to-beat practicality. So it was with
Timothy.
Timothy entered my office on a Friday
afternoon, with the cool winds of Autumn
launching their many colored kites into
the blue skies of Pittsburgh. As a Chief
Resident in Psychiatry I was housed in a
small but cozy office just off the
emergency room, where occasionally the
quiet of the office would be interrupted
by the muffled wailings of an approaching
ambulance or police car bearing an
involuntarily committed patient.
Timothy had nothing to do with my
emergency room. He was a self-referred
private patient, who by risking therapy
with a resident in training was able to
benefit from markedly lower costs per
session. For patients, it was a bit of a
crap shoot. If you happened upon a
talented young therapist, you won. If you
happened upon a not so talented young
therapist, you lost. For most patients, it
was a naïve leap of faith. But for
some patients, who were forearmed with a
bit of inside information, it was less
risky. In Timothy's case, I had been
suggested by someone who knew my work well
- his brother - so the risk seemed
less.
Timothy was a junior in college,
struggling with a few inner demons, not of
the psychotic nature but of the everyday
nature, those anxieties that we all
encounter and sometimes simply don't know
how to battle effectively. He was a tad
short but well built with an animal grace
that proclaimed "athlete" with every
movement. Indeed, he was an All-American.
He was also an honors student and
respected among his peers.
Timothy had just the right amount of
ugliness to his face to be handsome in a
rugged sort of way. His handshake was
firm, his eye contact genuine. He was
upfront, appropriately anxious for meeting
his first shrink, and clearly motivated to
succeed in therapy. He had a new quest to
conquer - knowledge of the self - and
deserved real credit for having the
courage to enter psychotherapy. He
approached one of my comfy chairs then
looked about the room with a furtive
glance like a soldier checking out the lay
of the land. He looked at me, raised his
eyebrow, nonverbally asking whether this
was the correct place to sit. I nodded my
head. And he plopped into the chair.
Therapy had begun.
After our introductions I asked him
what had brought him to my office. His
answer was given with a quick and certain
sureness, for Timothy was not a young man
of hesitations or second guesses. He had
mulled over this opening volley over and
over on the nights before our current
moment of introduction: "I seem to be
succeeding at every thing I want to, but
I'm not very happy." He paused, and then
with his first smile, almost sheepish in
nature, he continued, "Sort of weird,
isn't it?"
There was something so earnest and
serious in his demeanor, yet refreshingly
naive, that I immediately liked Timothy.
Here was a young warrior in life, sincere
and hardworking, who was just plain battle
fatigued. And to Timothy life was a
battle. People needed to be tough. If you
weren't tough, the answer was simple, you
got tougher. No matter what the cost, you
pick your quests and then you better damn
well succeed in them. That was the key to
happiness. The only problem was - it
wasn't working. He had done his part for
twenty years now, succeeding with every
task, but life was not doing it's part,
providing a feeling of
happiness.
As I took his history it became
apparent that Timothy had more than his
fair share of the typical stresses
routinely associated with the simple fact
that one has parents and siblings. If we
are honest about our evaluation of them,
families are great gifts but are sometimes
equally great curses. It is not that
families are by nature dysfunctional. It
is merely that families by nature are
composed of people. And people are often
problematic, so no family is free of
jealousy, hidden agendas, and politics. We
just hope that, in our families, these
negative attributes are far outweighed by
feelings of acceptance, open affection,
and genuine loyalty. Sometimes they are,
sometimes they aren't. I'm not telling the
reader anything new here.
Timothy had taken upon himself the not
so useful belief that love from his father
was essentially based on success in his
endeavors. For Timothy, the words "I'm
proud of you, Son" were equated with the
words, "I love you, Son." This confusion,
a very common confusion between fathers
and children - especially sons - leads to
an ever spiraling heat on a child to
succeed in grander and grander fashions.
If you letter in a sport that is great,
but now its time to be an All-American. If
you have a 3.6 grade point average, that
is wonderful, but why don't you have a
3.9?" It's a nasty game, where the winner
is always destined to be the loser, for
the winner can never be good
enough.
As our interview proceeded, Timothy
loosened up. His posture moved from a
soldier "at attention" to a soldier "at
ease", but it was still military all the
way. A few more smiles slipped from his
lips, and we even managed a chuckle or
two. Near the end of the interview, I
questioned myself whether I should
formally test his memory and
concentration, for he was concerned that
deficits in these areas were hurting him
in his tests at school.
In an initial interview with an elderly
client I routinely test such cognitive
functioning, for dementias can be easily
missed and may masquerade as depressive or
anxious states. It is less common to do
such testing initially with young clients
such as Timothy, especially if, as was the
case with Timothy, they are carrying a 3.8
gradepoint average at one of the most
difficult universities in the country. On
the other hand, Timothy seemed concerned
about these deficits. More importantly, I
was having an intuition. My gut was
telling me to do the formal cognitive
testing, even though my mind did not see
the immediate need. In psychotherapy, one
learns to listen to the gut, for the gut
often sees patient's souls better than the
mind.
The cognitive testing proceeded quite
nicely. As I suspected, although some of
his depressive symptoms were straining his
concentrating abilities, no striking
cognitive deficits were present. But I was
struck by a growing change in Timothy's
demeanor. He had moved from being "at
ease" to a state somehow even more rigid
than being "at attention". His back had
stiffened. His gaze intensified. And he
nervously licked his lips. Something was
up.
I reached a point in the testing,
called digit spans, where we give the
patient a set of numbers and then ask the
patient to repeat them back. We move from
one number to usually around seven numbers
in a row. It is merely a method of testing
the patient's ability to concentrate and
to employ his or her short term memory.
Our conversation went something like
this:
- Dr. Shea: Doing great. Try this one
Timothy: 2 - 4 - 3 - 9 - 8 -
-
- Timothy: 2, 4, 3, 9, 8 (his voice
countered in a rapid fire staccato, a
bit like a gattling gun bearing down on
poor General Pickett at
Gettysburg).
-
- Dr. Shea: Okay. 4 - 6 - 3 - 5 - 7 -
1-.
-
- Timothy: 4, 6, 3, 5, 7, 1 (said
with such intensity, that I looked up
from my clipboard to find myself face
to face with the barrel of the gattling
gun. The gun barrel was still smoking.
Timothy was looking right through me,
hunting for my soft spot. It was the
type of look a pro quarterback might
see in the eyes of a linebacker, say
Ray Lewis. It wasn't a friendly look. I
remember thinking to myself, "Okay, we
seem to be taking this a little bit
more seriously than may be
necessary".
-
- Dr. Shea: 3 - 2 - 7 - 1 - 5 - 8 - 4
-.
At which point Timothy said something
that I had never had a patient say until
then and have never had a patient say
since. He said, "Dr. Shea, you are not
going to beat me at this, no matter how
hard you try."
Here was an unexpected breakthrough. My
testing had not found the cognitive
deficits it was designed to uncover. It
had uncovered something profoundly more
important - a deficit of the soul. Our
testing had, in Timothy's mind, somehow
been malignantly transformed from a
technique to help us both uncover whether
or not his depression was causing
significant concentrating problems to a
celebrity death match in which one man and
only one man would be the victor. Deep
inside Timothy's soul, the sands of
self-respect were so unstable that even
the slightest challenge was a threat to
self respect and, hence, to being
loved.
- Dr. Shea: Timothy, I'm not trying
to beat you.
-
- Timothy: Yes you are.
-
- Dr. Shea: No, I'm not. (pause) I'm
trying to help you find out if your
concentration may be hurting you in
your studies, something you wanted me
to do for you. I'm not mad at you at
all, and I'm not hoping you will make
mistakes. (Timothy relaxed a bit in his
chair) Honest.
-
- Timothy: Well, it felt like you
were against me, like you wanted to
beat me. (Timothy smiled sheepishly
again) Sorry.
-
- Dr. Shea: No need to be sorry. It
is what you were feeling. (pause) How
often do you feel like this?
-
- Timothy: (Timothy took a deep
breath. Shook his head in self-
wonderment) Every day.
-
- Dr. Shea: Every day?
-
- Timothy: Every day.
-
- Dr. Shea: Really?
-
- Timothy: Every day, Dr. Shea.
-
- Dr. Shea: Give me an example.
-
- Timothy: Well, let's say I'm at a
party or something, and I'm talking
with a girl. If some guy comes up, even
a friend, and starts talking with us,
I'll feel like he's trying to make me
look stupid or something, like I
thought you were doing. So I feel like
I got to beat him, you know. You know
I'm not that good looking, so I got to
try harder. You know. Any time I meet a
guy, I feel I got to prove myself to
him. You ought to see me when I'm
taking a test man. I'm like going to
war or something, I don't know
what.
-
- Dr. Shea: That sort of sounds
unpleasant.
-
- Timothy: Yea, (pause) it is.
-
- Dr. Shea: You know what?
-
- Timothy: What?
-
- Dr. Shea: I don't think it's
necessary.
-
- Timothy: You don't?
-
- Dr. Shea: I don't. (I smiled, and
Timothy smiled back and sat back in his
chair, letting out a sigh. At which
point he said one word) Wow.
And here is where our story begins to
tie in with the relationship between
success and happiness. For with Timothy we
have our perfect example of a good human
being, who was highly successful, who was
desperately unhappy, for success had made
a rat of him as Lilly Tomlin notes so
wittily at the beginning of the
chapter.
Our society is geared to put us all in
the rat race, where worth is determined by
how many quests we succeed in achieving.
It has even begun to malignantly invade
our pre-schools where, instead of enjoying
play and socializing, our children are,
quite literally, pushed to learn, and if
you don't do this task, you are a failure
at age four! How sick can we get? The
answer is: pretty sick. There is a
multi-million dollar business in "Learning
Toys", one of the uniquely weird oxymorons
of all time. The goal of such toys is to
learn while you play. I don't know about
you, but that doesn't sound like playing
to me. That sounds like learning, you
know, schoolwork. Maybe I'm missing
something here.
By the way, God help you these days if
a fellow parent turns to you and asks,
"What are your kids doing this summer?"
and you don't answer with something like,
"Preparing for the 2020 Summer Olympics. I
have my kid enrolled in soccer camp,
swimming lessons, bike repair (in case he
becomes a tri-athlete), and intensive
reading of important twentieth century
authors that might be important in college
board preparation, you never know. I think
he's going to have a great summer. It'll
be a lot of fun."
I made the mistake of answering this
question honestly once by commenting, "You
know, I'm just going to let the boys relax
this summer. You know, do nothing. Just
play. They worked hard at school. I think
they deserve a break." Silence. Then I
heard, "Oh, that sounds great" said with
the tone of enthusiasm that one would
expect had I informed them I was sending
the boys to have a sex change operation
over the summer months. That night I kept
waiting for a knock on the door from
Children and Youth Services saying that my
neighbors had filed a charge of child
neglect. I'm not kidding, it's getting
ugly out there. And the people who lose
are our kids, for they are no longer
allowed to be kids. They are becoming
rats.
You see, the culture is fixated upon
this idea of questing for success in
multiple endeavors. We all get put in the
rat race and, naturally, we try to win.
But as Tomlin suggests, winning is really
losing in such races, for one is being
trained to be a rat. In essence, my
patient Timothy was Lilly Tomlin's
theoretical rat made into the flesh. And
it hurts. It hurts bad. In fact, some
adolescents and young adults hurt so badly
that they attempt and sometimes complete
suicide, driven by the gut feeling that
they are, and always will be, losers in
this quest for the gold.
In this regard popular culture seems to
love to make rats of us. For instance,
outlandish statements - sometimes taken
completely out of context - have a knack
for landing on inspirational posters such
as this beauty:
Winning isn't everything, it's
the only thing. -- Vince Lombardi,
Head Coach, Green Bay Packers
There's a nice quote. That must have
been hanging on the walls of the Enron
executive suite.
Pulled out of context - spoken to a
roomful of professional athletes who
hopefully understand that the statement is
a motivational exaggeration - such a
phrase can easily become less a dramatic
ploy than an accepted truth. Plopped onto
the wall of a Junior High locker room,
Coach Lombardi is suddenly transformed
from a brilliant motivator into a
brilliant ratmaker.
And here is another beauty from Bertolt
Brecht:
Why be a man when you can be a
success?
Delightful! No guilt production here.
And what about this motivator par
excellence from the famous baseball
manager Sparky Anderson, who I doubt was
aware of its darker
implications:
Success is the person who year
after year reaches the highest limits in
his field.
At first glance it doesn't look so bad
- almost sounds logical; but take another
look. Such a statement tells all young
athletes who are playing to the best of
their abilities, that if their play does
not land them at "the highest limits,"
they are not a success.
These are the kinds of statements that
create "Timothys". Beneath their adulation
of winners, they house the
metacommunication that one is never good
enough, unless you win. And sometimes,
even if you win you are not good enough,
because you didn't win the way you should
have.
Thankfully, there are people - highly
successful people - who disagree, as
witnessed by the following quote, from
Arthur Ashe, one of the greatest tennis
players of all time:
Success is a journey not a
destination.
The doing is usually more important than
the outcome.
Not everyone can be Number 1.
And here is one from Jennifer
James, author of Twenty Steps to
Wisdom:
Success is not a destination
that you ever reach.
Success is the quality of your
journey.
And, finally, leave it to Bob Dylan to
capture the essence of our argument with
his inimitable no-nonsense wisdom:
A man is a success if he gets
up in the morning
and gets to bed at night, and in
between
he does what he wants to
do.
This does not mean that one doesn't
want to succeed with certain quests in
life. We do. It just means that it is
important to pick such quests, limit the
number of such quests, and realize that we
are not failures if we are not the best in
all of our quests, rather it is much more
important to realize that we did our best
in such quests even if we finished last.
In the end, the most important quest is to
enjoy our quests.
A Rat Transformed, Misleading Road
Signs, and the First Piece in the
Puzzle
For a moment let us return to that
first session with Timothy. From the above
discussion we can see how an overemphasis
upon success can clearly backfire. But we
need to dig deeper. You will recall that
our goal in this chapter was to examine
the relationship between success and
happiness. It is Timothy who, despite all
of his maladaptive anxiety and his extreme
intensity, may hold a revelation
concerning the relationship of success to
happiness. It is a revelation that, as
they say in Zen literature, is splendid in
its simplicity.
After months of therapy, Timothy
entered my office with a smile on his face
(for the first time ever) and quipped,
"Dr. Shea, I got the answer." He promptly
plopped himself into the chair. I was
pleasantly taken back by his casualness,
his lack of tenseness, or a need to
impress me. He looked happy.
Timothy proceeded, "Now I don't know
exactly how important this really is, but
there is a part of me that thinks this is
what we we've been looking for. I just
feel that I have a better idea of what is
important in life." And then he said the
following. It was simple. It was accurate.
And it ultimately changed my
life;
- "You know what Dr. Shea?"
-
- "No, what Timothy?'
-
- "Success isn't happiness. Finding
happiness is success."
He sat back. "You are a successful man
if you are happy, not if you have
accomplished all sorts of things. I've had
it backwards all these years. That's why
I've achieved all these successes, and
I've not been happy. I need to sit back
and find out what will make me happy, what
I like to do, and how I want to do it.
Then I need to set those things as my
goal. Being happy will be my goal and
making other people happy too. I think I
can be productive this way. I just think
it's better. You know, I think I sort of
knew this all along, but I didn't really
know I knew it, what it really meant I
mean. What do you think?"
I answered, "I think you are on to
something. I really do."
Timothy smiled. He was a rat
transformed.
Here is where the plot thickens, for as
I said those words, I felt a twinge of
jealously towards Timothy, for he really
had discovered something, something that
he had not read or heard from me, but
something that had arisen from his own
soul. I knew the words, but I had not felt
the words - not like Timothy felt them for
his feeling was the feeling of stumbling
upon a truth, not just understanding it
intellectually but knowing it in your gut.
And it made me think.
It was one of those rare junctions in
therapy in which the therapist knows that
it is the patient who is saying something
that the therapist needs to hear. These
are wonderful moments, moments in which
two souls meet. They say the greatest joy
for a teacher is the moment when the
teacher realizes that the student has
become better than the teacher. So it is
in psychotherapy.
Timothy has taken us one step closer to
understanding why it is so easy to lose
sight of the ulimate goal, why it is so
easy for questing beasts to get lost on
their way to happiness. Apparently, not
infrequently, the road signs are wrong. In
particular the sign labeled "success"
often points to the wrong town. If one
doesn't keep Timothy's wisdom in mind that
- "Success isn't happiness. Finding
happiness is success." - it is very easy
to become preoccupied with quests that
follow roads to fame or fortune but not to
happiness. Timothy has given us the first
piece in the puzzle of the meaning of
happiness. We have come a giant step
closer to defining happiness by defining
what it is not.
By the way, Timothy is not alone in
this assertion. He is accompanied by quite
an array of big guns in the world of
philosophy:
Happiness is the meaning and
the purpose of life, the whole aim and end
of human existence. -- Aristotle
Happiness is the only sanction of
life: where happiness fails, existence
becomes a mad lamentable experiment.
-- George Santayana
How to gain, how to keep, and how to
recover happiness is in fact for most men
at all times the secret motive for all
they do. -- William James
By heaven we understand a state of
happiness infinite in degree, and endless
in duration. -- Benjamin
Franklin
And, finally, Timothy will be pleased
to know that he and Albert Schweitzer, the
Nobel Prize winning physician and
humanitarian, were on the same track:
Success is not the key to
happiness.
Happiness is the key to
success.
Now how does all this help us to find
happiness? I believe it is probably best
for me to simply show how it helped me.
About four years after Timothy ended his
therapy, I was still involved in my job at
a well known and highly respected academic
center. Success, by the standards of Vince
Lombardi was coming my way. I had been
told by the Chairman of the Department
that I was one of a handful of young turks
that they were grooming to be national
leaders in psychiatry. I had had a book
published at a very young age. I had begun
presenting on a national level. Like
Timothy, success after success was coming
my way.
On the other hand, loaded down with
administrative duties and research
pressures, my work hours had become
extreme, my time with my family less and
less. And when I was home, I wasn't home -
my mind was still at work. I felt as if I
was losing sight of my own clinical
mission. Over the preceding two years I
had slowly come to realize, to my
surprise, that I wasn't so happy
anymore.
It was then that I started thinking of
Timothy. I had this fantasy that I walked
into my office and Timothy was in my
chair. I sat down, and with a tremendous
sense of happiness, I turned to him and
said, "You know what, I just figured
something out."
- Timothy turned to me and said,
"What's that?"
-
- I answered, "Success is not
happiness. Finding happiness is
success."
-
- Timothy just smiled and said, "You
got it."
Three months later I changed jobs,
moved to New Hampshire to focus on
providing clinical care for the indigent
in a community mental health center and
never looked back once. In my academic
career, the time constraints, politics,
and research pressures had outstripped my
ability to use my time in a satisfying
fashion. What I discovered, upon moving to
New Hampshire, was that I was much better
suited, by nature and temperament, to
handle the unique and equally demanding
stresses of community mental health work.
I was happier.
As Timothy pointed out, one only
succeeds in life quests - developing
careers, finding rewarding relationships,
or gaining financial security - to the
degree that one has the time to enjoy
pursuing these quests while doing them.
Paradoxically, these seemingly all
important goals are meaningless unless
they help one to stay focused on the
ultimate goal - finding happiness.
Aristotle knew it. Santayana knew it.
William James knew it. Benjamin Franklin
knew it. Albert Schweitzer knew it.
Timothy knew it. And, now, we know
it.
We are now ready to hunt down the next
piece to the puzzle of happiness. To find
it, we must leave our cozy psychiatrist's
office in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and
travel to a place that is not only distant
in miles but also in years. It is a place
where one of the most powerful leaders in
history casts her rather corpulent shadow
into the nooks and crannies of cities as
diverse as London and Bombay. It is in
these shadows that the next piece of our
puzzle - a most elusive piece - awaits us.
It is to England and its great monarch,
Queen Victoria, whose unmistakable
silhouette cast this great shadow, that we
now turn.
Copyright © 2004
by Shawn Christoppher Shea and reproduced
with permission.
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