To tolerate being loved…

I read a fascinating article the June’s The Atlantic entitled What Makes Us Happy.  The author, Joshua Wolf Shenk , explains in the introduction:

Is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. Its contents, as much literature as science, offer profound insight into the human condition—and into the brilliant, complex mind of the study’s longtime director, George Vaillant.

And so the story goes:  Shenk speaks with Vaillant about his research and while it becomes clear that leading a healthy lifestyle tends to extend longevity, there’s very little insight into what makes for “the good life”.

Shenk uncovers and shares with his readers quite a few letters written by the men that participated in this study recounting their lives in their old age.  Factors such as wealth, power and success  don’t seem to have any effect on leading “the good life”. One man who led a rather successful life, from outward appearances, ended up killing himself.  Another, who lived as more of a hustler, always looking for his next meal, reports being quite content.

And really, what becomes clear, is that despite outside appearances, it is up to us, individually, to determine if we’re living the good life.  Ultimately, our experiences and how ‘happy’ our lives are has to do with our frame of mind and how we confront and deal with conflict more than the conflicts we face.

There’s no magic pill, there’s no self-help book.  If you think you’re leading ‘the good life’, then you probably are.

Another takeaway from the article that I found particularly poignant is Vaillant’s analysis of emotions.  He concludes, quite rightly I believe, that positive emotions make us more vulnerable than negative ones.

Fear and sadness have immediate payoffs—protecting us from attack or attracting resources at times of distress. Gratitude and joy, over time, will yield better health and deeper connections—but in the short term actually put us at risk. That’s because, while negative emotions tend to be insulating, positive emotions expose us to the common elements of rejection and heartbreak.

To illustrate the example, Vaillant speaks of one of the men who originally founded the Harvard research project, and that for his 70th birthday, his wife had found a list of his patients and collected letters of love and gratitude from them.  She displayed them in a beautifully bound box and presented it to him.  He never opened the box.  And as he explained to Vaillant on his 78th birthday:

It’s very hard for most of us to tolerate being loved.

And this really strung a chord with me.  I’ve witnessed this firsthand and I have to say that: yes, it’s hard to give and accept the love of others, but fuck it.  Sometimes it’s easy to just go hide in a corner because it feels safe.  I get that.  But aren’t our most precious memories made up of times when we’ve jumped off the proverbial cliff?  Sometimes we’ll fall and other times we’ll fly.  Either way, we’ll always land on our feet and how we get there is the whole adventure.