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June 16, 2023
I recently read a book with a very interesting character that made me stop and think.
The book was called “Devolution,” by Max Brooks. It’s a story about a community called "Greenloop" that prides itself on its sustainability, harmony with the natural world, and cooperation. It was founded by a man and his wife who had very lofty ideals about the optimal human society.
The wife's name was Yvette. She was a meditation and yoga teacher and prided herself on being endlessly optimistic. If something even remotely upsetting happened, her response was always to usher the entire community into her meditation room to regain their sense of peace again.
But soon, crisis came. A nearby volcano erupted, cutting off Greenloop from the outside world and making it impossible for them to obtain food or rescue. On top of that, a tribe of hungry Sasquatches (yes, it's that kind of book) emerged from the seemingly idyllic woods surrounding the community.
When crisis came, Yvette turned into a different person. She isolated herself from both the community as a whole and from her husband (who was equally helpless in the face of hardship).
She seemed completely unable to accept the reality of the situation, so her seemingly "optimized" mindset crumbled in the face of adversity.
Real life slapped her across the face, and all she knew how to do was retreat to her garage and ride her elliptical for hours a day, with guided meditations blaring in her ears to keep her from being alone with her thoughts.
She was searching desperately for peace, for a return to order, but she didn’t get it…because she couldn’t accept the reality of life. She learned the hard way what a character in Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel, “The Brothers Karamazov” summed up so well:
“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”
Yvette had the "love in dreams" part figured out - all the time she spent in meditation ensured that. But when it came time to put that mindset into action, she fell flat on her face.
In contrast with Yvette, we have another writer, Viktor Frankl, who famously survived a hellish concentration camp experience and wrote “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
He survived the Holocaust as a Jew precisely because he accepted the reality of his fate. But that acceptance did not lead to despair, as it did for so many others in his situation.
He survived - indeed, he did much more than survive - because he found a way to translate this acceptance of his fate into a sense of responsibility that gave him some agency over his life.
Instead of resisting the reality of the situation, he accepted the hardship, the injustice, and the chaos, as well as the challenge it was presenting him. Then, he sought ways to put this love and faith into action.
Here’s how he put it:
“We needed to stop asking ourselves the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.”
Frankl discovered that all the theory, good intentions, and mindset optimization in the world meant nothing if it didn’t lead to right action in the face of adversity.
So what can we learn from this?
All of these wellness practices we’re learning and implementing are meaningless if they don’t translate to real life.
The perfect meditation routine means nothing if it doesn’t lead to increased resilience and calmness in conflict.
The optimal diet means nothing if you can’t make good choices when your food options or meal schedule gets disrupted.
Having a first-rate exercise routine means nothing if it doesn’t result in an increased capacity for dealing with the demands of daily life.
A positive mindset when things are going well has very little value if it doesn’t hold up if something goes wrong.
If your health practice only works when everything is predictable and orderly, it is virtually meaningless. We always need to balance the ideal with the reality that life is chaotic and messy.
Next time a wrench gets thrown into something you’re trying to improve (your diet, your mindset, your ability to manage stress, a relationship), see that as an opportunity to practice those skills where they really count - in real life.
Real life, with all its chaos, uncertainty, and unpredictability, is the crucible that ensures that our self-improvement endeavors are actually useful.
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