(In honour of recently deceased iconic songwriter of the 1960’s, Burt Bacharach. Burt will be resting in peace and some awe, certainly if any celestial composer’s hall of fame be listed somewhere in alphabetical order)
Last week I fired my shrink, or at least agreed a pause in our sessions. Do not draw the wrong conclusions. I like my shrink very much and feel that if anybody can offer me value in that role, she can. I was encouraged to seek mental health counselling by my family when first diagnosed, and I quickly overcame my generational and national cynicism towards that profession (which immigrant New Yorker could grow up watching Woody Allen movies and not be cynical about shrinks?) and signed up, once it was confirmed that my insurance would cover it.
The reason that we declared a pause was very positive. She had given me the reassurance I needed at this time, so additional sessions felt like they would only offer marginal value. She has a waiting list as long as your arm, so freeing up space for others seemed only fair, so long as it was agreed that I could jump the line again if my circumstances changed.
After the first couple of sessions, our time together had tended to follow a pattern. The shrink would try to explore my state of mind, and concluded that I had been doing the same thing and reached defensible conclusions. She might try a technique or a device like a questionnaire or model, only for me to be more interested in critiquing the model than being a subject of it. And she would finish the session with howls of laughter, declaring that she probably needed a shrink more than I did.
One probe that she used a few times tested how anxious I might be about my legacy, and questions concerning the meaning of life. What’s it all about, Graham? My stock reply to this probe, after a bit of thought, was to profess that I wasn’t sure that life needed to have much of a deep meaning, and that even if it did, I was not overly concerned by the question. Am I not just a humble creature trying to do his best for himself and those close to him, someone whose demise would probably not change the course of history a great deal?
In our last session, my shrink tried a slightly different tack, unveiling a model where I had to select from a long list of values, and then progressively narrow my selection down to only five. The surviving values did not need to represent the meaning of life as far as I was concerned, but probably gave a good clue to what affected my mood. On a bad day, one or more of my core values will probably have been violated in some way.
I raced through the exercise, and came up with Integrity, Creativity, Service, Education and Health. The shrink pointed out that all her patients tended to choose health, and I readily agreed that a year ago I would probably not have made that particular selection, health being something we typically assume will be all right on its own, until it isn’t. For me education was the nearest available proxy for lifelong learning and growth. Along with that one, integrity and creativity are values I would probably have chosen ever since becoming an adult, while the choice service owes a lot to the influence of my wife and the fulfillment we have discovered together from volunteering at the old folks’ home.
Now I look again at my list, and by cheating a bit, we can use the exercise to come close to answering the question that Burt wrote for Cilla to ask. Health is a prerequisite – without that, not much will be accomplished. Integrity represents a personal set of fair rules, and could encompass honesty, fairness, justice, equity and other values. Education and creativity are my selections for how best to go about activities, but I could also have chosen curiosity, growth, teamwork or even competence – we are at our most effective when we utilise our strengths and work collaboratively. Service is the closest of my five to a purpose. When selecting service I rejected alternatives of three types. One group included family and nation, a second one faith and religion, and a third included pleasure and happiness.
Happiness was tempting, for what is the point of choosing to be unhappy? But it can also be rather hedonistic, for our own happiness should not exclude that of others.
The religious ones had the same problem for me, in potentially being exclusive. I struggle with any group that likes to think of itself as chosen by God what gives us the right to consider ourselves so special compared with others, or even other creatures? I do find the teachings of Jesus to be quite a good guide for my behaviour, but there are other good guides available and I wouldn’t want to proclaim my own to be superior. And, while I use prayer, I certainly can’t believe that any God would be selective in who to love or to save, or waits to sit in judgement.
The group including family and nation also felt too exclusive to me. I believe that we should be careful not to identify ourselves uniquely with any team or tribe.
The exercise of my shrink can can offer a sort of answer for Alfie. While healthy, I should act with integrity (according to my definition) to use growth and creativity (and a few other things) towards the purpose of finding happiness through service. I find this summary helpful. The exercise is surely available online if anybody else feels the urge to complete it.
But we can take an even more literal and biological approach to defining our purpose. All creatures on earth seek to stay alive and healthy long enough to procreate, hence prolonging and evolving our species. If we include that dimension, it is obvious how our children and their other parents must lie at the core of our purpose. That insight leads me to another, even simpler answer for Alfie, and it uses another baseball metaphor. Some hitters are all about themselves and aim to hit every pitch out of the park. I prefer hitters who will hit a home run if the right pitch comes along but whose main priority is to get on base one way or another, even via a walk or a bunt. These players describe that approach as keeping the line moving. If most hitters reach base, the team will score a lot of runs every inning as the line keeps moving along.
I hope I have kept the line moving, whether or not I have hit many home runs. I like the comparison with ants, creatures I find admirable, where everyone knows their role and works as a team towards a common purpose.
A final dimension of this musing concerns the end of life, and the need to get out of the way having set up the rest of the line to thrive without us. It gives me great satisfaction that my partner and all my kids, and even many within my wider orbit, are so well placed to thrive. That gives a sense of completeness, and offers a whole bundle of happiness.
Thank you Amanda for prompting these musings and for all the reassurance over the last few months. You provided exactly what I needed, and perhaps can do so again later in this process. And thank you too and rest in peace, Burt, perched next to Johann Sebastian. I hope Alfie had his own Amanda to find his own answer to your question.
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