THE PSYCHOLOGICALLY RICH LIFE
I read an article today in the Washington Post on a scientific study about what makes people feel most alive. Apparently scientists have been examining what makes people feel most alive for a long time and had settled on two basic ways of living a satisfying life. Forty plus years of research have settled on two ways of feeling fully alive. To quote the article:
“The first says that a good life is a happy life, one created by pursuing comfort, satisfaction and more joy than sadness. The second says that a good life is a meaningful life, one grounded by purpose, connection and making the world better. But recently, researchers have proposed a third answer: A good life is a psychologically rich life, marked by novel experiences, perspective-shifting insights and complexity, but also more discomfort and challenges than a happy life or a meaningful life.”
This article suddenly struck me as helping me to understand myself and people around me. In the study when people were asked which path they would prefer, a large majority said they would like to be happy as described above. A smaller percentage preferred a meaningful life. Only 6 to 16% said they would prefer the third, the psychologically rich life, which is not as comfortable and often gets you into difficulties of one kind or another.
I’ve decided that I am in that 16%, not by choice but by inclination, maybe because of my DNA, Having rich, often unexpected or by chance, experiences is what makes me feel most alive. in fact feeling fully alive seems to me to be a good goal in my life, rather than being comfortable or doing good. It explains why I wanted to leave predictable and routine suburbia for the unknown of Marshall. It explains why I have never felt settled in the United States and through my life I have needed to escape abroad every two years, usually to India which many people think of as being an uncomfortable place which is so bewildering that you could never feel at home there. It explains why I felt so itchy within the confines of academia and could not teach in a way that I felt was fitting people into academic conventions or was a preparation for employment. It explains why, in the last four years I have spent 16 months traveling abroad, both to places where I had been before like India and Germany and been escaping to for years, and to places where I have never been and didn’t know the language or the customs or even know anyone. Given a choice I am more stimulated by a month in Paris (or anyplace) than a month in Swannanoa. It was what led me to travel by train at 85 in a circle around the United States by Amtrak, often overnight in reclining chairs, discovering new things along the way. The adventure was worth the discomfort. What I am feeling my way to is stimulation, and this comes by not fitting in and not knowing what will come next but by being open to whatever happens.
But this also explains to me why almost none of my 80 year old friends are interested in accompanying me. I tell them how easy it is, you just see a cheap flight, push a button and buy it, look for an Airbnb that is cheap and book it, take easy transportation from the airport to the airbnb and then the next day walk around and figure out where you are. Google Maps and the Internet makes this both easy and cheap.
But the only takers I get are people in my 16% and most of them can’t travel because they are locked in jobs or tied to families that don’t want to suddenly fly away. And once you get old there is the problem with knees and backs and the fear of ending up in a distant hospital or worse which is as much of an excuse for not traveling as a good reason.
But what this article shows me is that I simply find satisfaction in life in a different way from most people who want to be happy or people who want to change the world for the better. I feel nuts in the presence of those who want to be happy because I deliberately choose discomfort and risk and I feel guilty in the presence of those who want to do good and have a meaningful life because I am always flying a way or lost in dreams. From both I get the feeling that I am either a person frittering away his life or a person enjoying himself while the world collapses around him. I have no desire to be securely happy and political activism seems to me a way of losing my soul.
I have no idea how you go about scientifically studying satisfaction in life and no idea whether this particular study will stand up or not, and I don’t care. All I know is that this way of sorting people seems to suit me and my way of getting along.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 