Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine

by Derren Brown

The greatest burden a child must bear, we remember from Jung, is the unlived lives of its parents.

Choosing a lifestyle that makes a statement of non-conformity (or a rejection of parental expectations) might work as a temporary rite of passage to a more independent place, but in as much as it relies on the ‘enemy’ to know what to reject, it remains tied to and dependent upon the opposition. It may give the illusion of authorship, but ‘fuck you’ is too much about the ‘you’; its centre of gravity is external. It’s also, in the longer term, a very unhappy stance.

The important point to remember is that Socratic happiness was about self-questioning and about appreciating the reality of an unseen world that lies beyond the physical realm. We might glimpse it through a process of contemplation and self-realisation. Happiness was indistinguishable from a rising above, a virtuous elevation, a higher plateau. This idea would stick around and bother us for a very long time.

Mill’s vision for us is helpful when we feel that we are unable to fit in, when we view our separateness with embarrassment. It is a common part of human experience to feel that we don’t belong. In fact, it is often cited as the greatest human concern. We may feel when around particular people that we have nothing to contribute, or have that miserable sensation that everyone else shares some fundamental part of normal human experience that we lack. We try to fit in, and we neither convince ourselves that we do, nor, we suspect, those around us. At those times, what makes us different seems only to be the crushingly disappointing absence of what bonds everyone else together. Mill says that this difference is something to be celebrated. We may not have what they have, and this is a very good thing. We should look to developing and strengthening those parts of us that feel unique, not as an aggressive stance against society but with the warm glow of knowing that we can contribute more to it as a distinct, idiosyncratic individual. And therefore, ultimately, be of more use to the world.

T. S. Eliot told us ‘Humanity cannot bear very much reality.’14 Now, more than ever before, we are presented with a coruscating array of narcotics and divertissements, which pander to the myopic, amnesic fancies of our experiencing self. Of course they have their place. They are each helpful or amusing in the short term, and we would begrudge neither the beleaguered family man his PlayStation, nor the weekend bacchanal her occasional restorative. Life would be less colourful without such things, assembled by man to stimulate or calm the mind. But they are the very opposite of what we truly need at our core: mechanisms to help us engage with our deep stories. Without these structures, we merely swing between Schopenhauer’s poles of pain and boredom. Xanax without therapy, or PlayStation without conversation, do little for us. Not only this: we also laugh at religion, that ham-fisted effort to articulate our deep need for meaning. We are no longer pointed towards the profound; we are distracted from it or too easily able to drown out its call. Yet life remains synonymous with growth, and the best growth comes from recognising the yearnings and crises of the spirit. Today’s crisis is that we don’t know how to honour our deep needs, and we mistake recreation for happiness.

Here, then, is our first building block, central to Stoic philosophy and to the tranquil life: 1. If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgement of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgement now.8 These are the words of Marcus Aurelius, one of the greatest Roman emperors, taken neither from a public speech to motivate the masses, nor from philosophical teachings to be bestowed upon pupils. They come from his private journals and stand as a note to self from the most powerful man on Earth.

Epictetus, the Roman slave who became one of the most prominent Stoic teachers, gives us the same important message as Marcus in his Enchiridion, or Handbook: ‘Man is disturbed not by things, but by the views he takes of them.’12 This truth is our starting point if we are to adopt Stoic principles. Epictetus later expands: ‘If, therefore, any be unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone.’

The Stoics even said that a Stoic sage (a semi-fictional role model for the seeker of virtue) would still, while being tortured on the rack, be able to smile and think ‘This is happening to my body, but it isn’t happening to me.’ We may find this too far-fetched, as did many of the Stoics’ contemporaries, but the reality is that for the person being tortured or abused, the kind of detachment that the Stoic message encourages might be the only comfort remaining. The message is not ‘blame yourself’ but to realise that whatever happens to you, it does not need to affect you, your core self, unless you choose to let it. Understood correctly, that is a powerful message of hope and a core survival skill for victims of oppression. Viktor E. Frankl’s extraordinary memoir from the concentration camps, Man’s Search for Meaning, is a moving testimony to this fact: ‘Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.’

Some people seem trapped in a need to elicit sympathy from the rest of the world; they may constantly dramatise, exude self-pity and appear eternally wronged. These people rarely advance or solve their problems without therapy. Interestingly, if we try to help them, our most effective strategy is usually to help them gain some distance or perspective from their emotions: an echo of precisely this Stoic principle. After a certain point, merely sympathising with and echoing their grumbles tends to reinforce them.

Work, therefore, to be able to say to every harsh appearance, ‘You are but an appearance, and absolutely not the thing you appear to be.’ And then examine it by those rules which you have, and first, and chiefly, by this: whether it concerns the things which are in our control, or those which are not; and, if it concerns anything not in our control, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference. It has lost some of its power through its quaintness. The pious language masks a mighty statement of self-affirmation, first formulated by a Roman slave, long before Christianity took hold.

The key to why this works is that when we let things go that we can’t control, nothing bad happens. The situation can’t get any worse, and generally we get to feel an awful lot better. For me, the relief I feel when I remind myself that a source of annoyance is fine, is none of my business, is akin to the surge of joy that would fill my lungs as a child when I realised it was a Saturday and I didn’t have to go to school. Thus the thought itself, if allowed to deeply settle, provides its own clear reward.

We can benefit from remembering the words of the novelist David Foster Wallace: ‘You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realise how seldom they do.’

If you shall have lain down ten days, get up and attempt to make a long walk, and you will see how your legs are weakened. Generally, then, if you would make anything a habit, do it;9 Epictetus is saying that we need to practise. If we don’t do something for a long time, it is difficult to then do it when we need to. And, likewise, failure is not important (for everyone will fail as life and fortune sometimes prove too much for us to virtuously handle); tenacity is the key. ‘Getting back in the saddle’ is how this thought has come down to us over the millennia.

We have now a few simple tools in place for ensuring that we can enjoy a little more of the psychological robustness in our lives that will lessen occasions of psychological disturbance and unhappiness. We can step back from a situation and decide not to add to our first impressions by concocting a story that makes us feel bad. We can bring to mind helpful and familiar thoughts or questions when we need them, such as ‘Is this something in my control?’ or ‘Do I have a problem right now?’ When we remember, we might even get ahead of the game by contemplating the day before it happens and/or holding ourselves to account by reviewing our behaviour at night before we sleep.

Anger, then, will often seem like a reasonable response to a situation, but we should reconsider. It pulls us from our natural state of openness and turns us against humanity. We should instead reconsider our attachments and, notwithstanding the importance of exerting just punishment, avoid acting out of anger. It’s simply bad for us. The extirpation of this particular passion therefore realigns us with humanity and restores a gentleness and sociability that we should remember lie at the heart of Stoic thinking.

Here, then, are some ways of undoing our fury before it takes hold.

1. Wait

To phrase our grudges in this accusatory way is to trigger fears within the other; to cause them to think ‘I am incompatible with this person, I am not good enough, I am not normal.’ Our unhelpful reaction, born of our own fear that things are not right, that our world is crumbling in some small but scary way, triggers reciprocal fear in the other person. Instead, there is much power in simply stating how one feels as if it were one’s own problem: ‘I feel this way when you do that thing.’ By respectfully avoiding the other person’s fear triggers, and making no accusations, the thorny subject can usually be broached some time after the event without an argument ensuing. So we need wait only long enough to consider our phrasing and take responsibility for our feelings. To wait so long that we never bring up our concerns is likely to do both parties a disservice. Expressing our unhappiness in a sensitive way is one of the most productive things we can do in a relationship.

2. Resist curiosity

3. Use imaginary friends

4. Lower your self-belief

When we are criticised, we usually snap into a spluttering defensiveness, which we would find ludicrous if we heard it from others. We can remind ourselves of how easily we can identify negative patterns in other people (‘he’s pretty arrogant, he talks too much, she tends to put other people down’) but when such criticisms come our way, we object to the generalisation and insist on being given individual examples, each of which we can then explain away: ‘When do I do that? Tell me one instance where I did that! Right, well, that was because …’ The fury of Seneca’s driving demon has us believe in our anger that we are entirely faultless. Perhaps we would admit our defects at another time in another conversation.

5. You have the same faults as those who annoy you

6. Understanding the offender’s motivation

When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you’ll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you’ll have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they’re misguided and deserve your compassion. Is that so hard?

No one says to himself, ‘I myself have done or could have done the thing that is making me angry now’.

The psychiatrist-author Viktor E. Frankl, writing of his experiences in the concentration camp, finds this same truth in the most unthinkable circumstances, when he writes about the way in which prisoners placed in positions of authority granted meagre favours to their friends while others were denied: It is not for me to pass judgement on those prisoners who put their own above everyone else. Who can throw a stone at a man who favours his friends under circumstances when, sooner or later, it is a question of life or death? No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.46 It’s a powerful thought. Understand where the person is coming from. Instead of fumbling for reasons to be annoyed, empathise with their behaviour. Let anger dissolve into love. Seneca tells us:

In the moment of conflict or tension, we are likely to feel put down, even guilty for just being ourselves. But this is about our own pain; the message we are receiving is triggering a cluster of responses we have carried around since we were young. A dominant father used to make us feel insignificant, and as an adult we find that anytime someone – particularly an older male – suggests we are useless, we are flung back to the feelings of that pained child. We are hearing a frustrated expression of suffering from this other person and in the blink of an eye making it about our own afflictions. If we recognise this pattern, and take responsibility for it, we can, to some extent, be liberated from it. We can practise recognising the first flutter of pain, then relaxing as we pull our centre of gravity inwards towards us, and hearing hurtful words as what they are: a cry from a heart that has nothing to do with ours.

7. Lower your expectations

We can only guarantee success in trying our best. The desired outcome in the world may prove impossible, but having succeeded in our private aims, we won’t be ruined by a feeling of crushing failure. The result we’re aiming for has moved into our sphere of control (we aim to do our utmost), and therefore we are more likely to arrive at a pleasing outcome. And real-world success is also more likely, as we will not be hampered by the anxiety that comes from trying to control what we cannot. The Stoic stance brings a uniquely quiet, persistent resoluteness in the face of adversity. This is a brilliant bit of thinking. We can aim high, seek to change the world, yet always be satisfied with the outcome. The Stoics have taken the reclusive Epicurean instruction to desire only what you already have, and allowed it to be active, engaged and vital.

If we are to talk of existing in any sense after we die, then the best we can do is to extend our sense of self – our space-time worm – to continue beyond the grave and incorporate how the atoms of our decomposing bodies feed into continuing life after we have breathed our last. Then we might say we have some sort of continuing existence. But this is unlikely to be meaningful to us, and certainly no consolation in the face of a fear of death. There is no sense here that our personhood has survived. Defenders of the after-life want to have it both ways: on the one hand, they wish to describe a fundamental reality that operates beneath the everyday world we perceive. On the other, they wish to retain the everyday world’s organisational language (and use ideas such as ‘after’) to describe it, as if such spatial or temporal concepts have any relevance to the world beyond what we perceive through space and time.

We might sometimes pay patient heed to our sorrow, allow it to penetrate into us, knowing that it is an important articulation of what was already there. It is showing us that something demands our attention. We do not need to fear the world, or treat it with suspicion. Any monsters that dwell there are our own. The final call, then, is not to merely seek tranquillity but, from its strong shores, to welcome its opposite. It is a strong society that encourages dialogue with its enemies, and a fearful one that promulgates reductive nouns and categories (such as ‘Terror’) to demonise and avoid the unsettling complexities of active, untidy reality. We, too, must seek the same conversation within ourselves. And do so before the forces we repress rage against us.