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Non-attachment

It is interesting that those who have urged the path of non-attachment have done so from the perspective of later life, having first experienced all the agonies and ecstasies that attachment can bring.

It seems to me that non-attachment is an aspect of wisdom that can only be achieved as part of the wisdom of aging.

Young people need to experience attachment, to ‘feel’ value through it and so gain an understanding of what is important and worthwhile.  Without this understanding, there is only ‘detachment’, which negates value.

Non-attachment recognizes and acknowledges value but without the need to hold on to it, be it in the form of a relationship, an idea or experience or something material.

Only through holding on in the first place can you learn to let go . . .

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The place of passion (2)

Passion, meaning, engagement, flow, now . . .

These were some of the themes I highlighted in my last post. I wonder if all or any of these are part of the essential stuff of joy?

Passion – I think there must be a kind of passion inherent in joy; that sense of intensity, what else can we call it? But I also sense that, with age, perhaps we develop an awareness of different shadings of passion.

In the context of loving partnerships we draw a distinction between the initial fire of romantic love and the deeper rootedness of enduring love. Some class only the first as ‘passion’. It seems to me limiting to see only ‘fire’ as passion.  There is just as much intensity in the depths of a still pool. Joy is inherent in both.

If I define passion in this way, then I believe it is indeed an ingredient in the experience of joy. However, I am not at this point clear whether the relationship is as cause or effect.

Meaning – It seems to me that those experiences that people cite as bringing them joy invariably carry a deep personal significance.  These include the great ‘human’ events, such as falling in love, marriage, birth. They include specific relationships – with partners, with children, with friends, with pets. Then there is the response to nature and natural beauty, to the arts, or to religious experience

We respond to those things we find ‘meaning-full’ in some way. However, when I look at all of these, what strikes me is that what underlies our joyful response is a sense of connection beyond ourselves to another being – human, animal or divine – or to nature and/or the universe.

So my question her is, is what is important connection and does our perception of meaning first require a sense of connection? In a world that is, superficially, increasingly connected yet in which at a deeper level there is anomie and rootlessness, this would explain the lack of a clear sense of and capacity for joy.

Engagement, flow and ‘nowness’ – I think it is almost impossible to experience joy unless you are fully present. Therefore it this trio seem increasingly to be pre-conditions for cultivating a capacity for joy.

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The place of passion

Should we ‘follow our passion’? Should we ‘bring passion’ to everything we do?  Where does this idea of passion fit into our experience of and creation of joy?

I find myself caught between these two positions, not sure which is the truer path or whether there is a middle way.

My experience and observation suggest that, in ‘following our passion’, there can be great satisfaction, richness and intensity; however, this may also be seductive. That very intensity can become one more addictive ‘high’, increasingly compulsive and often ego-driven.

Instead of leading us to fulfilment, our talents and passions may thus easily become our curse. I know that sometimes, when I face in this direction, I become caught up in a sense of being ‘driven’ to achieve an end.  I am not convinced that this ultimately leads me towards peace or joy. Perhaps there is a fine line between passion and obsession.  One’s passions can bring one utterly into the moment, yet they can also become the stuff of illusion, drawing us to some elusive ‘goal’ that deflects us from experiencing the now.

Maybe it really is the case that it’s not what you do but the way that you do it that matters. I am beginning to realise that I find it much simpler to remain grounded and non-attached when I am not over-invested in what I do. Instead, if I try to bring my passion for life and sense of joy to the task in hand, whatever it may be, to imbue it with all the dimensions that my experience allows me to bring to it, I seem to find a rich vein of transformation. The focus is not on the doing, but on the ‘being within the doing’. Flow and engagement are essentially qualities of being, not of achievement.

Perhaps passion, in this context, is essentially a quality of authenticity, which itself must be built on a clarity as to one’s sense of meaning or higher purpose.

[to be continued]

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Frameworks for Happiness (2)

The interesting thing about the framework shown below is that most people seem to assume that you have to work your way ‘upwards’ from pleasure to meaning.

Tony Hsieh points out that research suggests that the opposite is true; if we can figure out our higher purpose first and build the other layers on top of this, we have much more likelihood of achieving enduring happiness.

To me, this implies that, if we were to encourage the cultivation of a capacity for joy, inherent in which is a sense of meaning and connection, it might become more likely that individuals  would put in place the most appropriate building blocks for happiness.

(You can find this image and more in the Resources section of the Delivering Happiness website)

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Frameworks for Happiness (1)

There seems to be a certain timeliness in my exploration of joy; with governments looking at indicators of ‘happiness’ and businesses aspiring to ‘deliver happiness’, one can’t help but hope for a sea-change in values and motivations!

Increasingly I find many of the same words cropping up in discussions of models of happiness that I relate to joy; connectedness, flow, engagement, meaning.

In attempting to understand joy, it therefore seems important also to look at happiness in an attempt to grasp what connects and what differentiates them.

Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos), in his book Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, offers an interesting selection of frameworks through which to view happiness. I am including two of these, with some commentary, in this and a subsequent post. (You can find these and more in the Resources section of the Delivering Happiness website)

In looking at this model, my sense is that perceived control (the ability to impact on outcomes) and perceived progress (some sense of forward motion) are vital to one’s sense of wellbeing and happiness, but not necessarily a component part of joy – interesting that both require a time dimension.

However, connectedness and vision/meaning seem to me to be key to the experience of joy.

In the context of connectedness, I found particularly interesting the conclusion (from The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt) that

. . . happiness doesn’t come primarily from within but, rather, from between.

Vision and meaning are seen in this model as giving us our internal sense of value. However, as indicated in earlier posts, I would also suggest that there is also a need to develop skills in the creation of meaning – meaning does not simply exist outside of ourselves as something we must find but is something that we have the power to bring to our experience of living.

What do you perceive as the connectors and differentiators of happiness and joy? (Please comment!)