The Alpha Road

I know, I know. Everything with a title as grandiose as this can often be cast aside as arrogant and presumptuous. If anyone could provide an answer to what is the meaning of life in a blog post, most probably all of us should have been happy by now. But please bear with me and judge after you read the following sentences. Also, of course, take all of this with a grain of salt, and treat more like a quest, and not a definitive answer. It’s all about the journey, isn’t it?

The meaning of life is being happy and it takes a lot of work, day in and day out. So far nothing new I am sure. But let us use our human brains to conceptualize a little bit and define happiness and suffering first.

Suffering is when the conditions of our life (pay attention,  conditions, something which outside of us and often beyond our control) do not match our expectation (the blueprint for a happy life, that I am sure all of us have in one form or another). You wish things were different in some way, but they aren’t. This “milder” case causes most often just stress and not suffering per se, but taken to the extreme it can become almost unbearable. In that extreme situation, where the outside conditions make it impossible to achieve and even strive for our blueprint, suffering takes place. And it often happens that the outside world does something to our life that makes it impossible to do what we wanted to do.

And what makes us happy? Exactly the opposite! The situation that our lives are in at the moment match what we term a success. But what happens so often in this situation is that the moment we achieve the seemingly “perfect” life, we tend to quickly become unhappy. And then we create another blueprint.

So all in all, the default situation after all seems to be suffering. The simple truth is that happiness cannot be found outside of us. It is defined in another way. In the words of the french Buddhist monk (previously molecular biologist) Matthieu Ricard:

“Happiness is a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind…not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optional state of being.”

Granted, outside conditions might be more conductive for happiness to occur, but our minds are ultimately the ones responsible for it. And again, it can be trained. We should still strive to change the outside conditions both for ourselves and others. If life does not match our blueprint, we either try harder or change the blueprint!

Progress, even a small one every day, can change our lives. No need to try to be perfect, you already are. And the easiest way is to help others change theirs. Give and grow!

And at the end we should be calm, knowing that true happiness is always within us and cannot be changed by the external circumstances.

I am not sure if this is the truth, but I will try to live this way, sharing what I find along the path. Perhaps this is the meaning of life after all. Finding things along the path.

wayThe Free Dictionary: A road, path, or highway affording passage from one place to another. →

The following is a commentary with some thoughts on a book that I came across recently. That book, The Flinch (by Julien Smith), left a deep impression on me. It is freely available, and I urge you to take a look. It is also a relatively short read and takes just an hour or two.

The flinch is the primal protection mechanism that we all have. It occurs in the face of immediate danger and is composed of several distinct physiological events acting together. The muscles on our face contract, eyes tend to close, we often lift our hands in front of our bodies for protection, adrenaline rises (hence also heartbeat). The “flinch” response is what has kept us alive for thousands of generations during human evolution. It is interesting to note that we tend to flinch even at non-physical danger – the mere thought of something unpleasant or hard to accomplish, such as a difficult exam, tends to trigger the same physiological reactions within us, now called stress.

In the old times, when immediate danger was indeed a part of everyday life, these instantaneous changes in our bodies were quickly followed by the fight or flight response, where they were put to good use. For example, the increased adrenaline levels would lead to increase heart-beat, hence more blood pumping, necessary to deliver energy (oxygen) to all muscles and other tissues – necessary for running or fighting. The stress we experienced was preparation for a coordinated response.

Nowadays, not only is this stress caused by some intangible thoughts that represent danger that is either in the past or the future (hence by all definitions of reality – nonexistent), it just accumulates without having the opportunity to fulfil its function and be dissipated. Let’s take a typical example of an agitated driver in a traffic jam. You can see the same reactions as mentioned before – the red face, sweating, actions with the hands. But this stress has nowhere to go, the driver will most probably just feel those emotions and slowly at the end manage to get to work. The stress has not disappeared and the same hormones and substances injected into the blood flow continue to circulate throughout the day, eventually leading to the disease of the 21st century man – chronic stress.

These are the negative aspects of stress, which as mentioned before on the Alpha Road can be addressed with mindfulness training. In The Flinch it is suggested that there might be positive ones as well. We tend to live in an over-protected society (of course this applies mostly to western countries). It has never been easier to live life. There are almost no physical dangers, we have access to the fundamental needs such as shelter, food and clothing, together with medicine, education and recreation. One can drift through life comfortably without thinking. But here comes the problem.

The world does not work like that. There are always catastrophes and tragedies in every life, whether they are personal or societal. It is just a question of time before something unexpected and life-changing happens. Also society has changed. Even jobs that were deemed extremely secure, such as law and medicine, have people who have it hard to find a job. Gone is the world of hierarchy climbing, now everything changes in the matter of hours. And whoever is not prepared, is in danger.

We should put ourselves into stressful situations on purpose as much as possible. Whether this is finally writing that resignation letter, or e-mailing with an inquiry about that dream job, or starting out your own business around what you love, or simply talking to that girl at the party – we should understand the flinch, but still go through and act. In a situation where we would normally shy away and shrink, we should double our efforts and go in boldly. Because let’s face it – what do we have to lose? As many philosophers have asked, many of us are afraid of death and life at the same time.

By acting with courage during stress we train and prepare ourselves for whatever the circumstances can be. And it must be noted that very few of us will have to endure what our grandparents had to go through. We should be grateful for this and go after what we truly want with boldness and joy. We are finally fulfilling our true purpose and are not slaves to our emotions and circumstance. That is what it takes to be a master of one’s own life and to recover what we all have inside.