Flow - Psychology of Optimal Experience. Csikszentmihalyi by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Author:Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Language: eng
Format: epub

8

ENJOYING SOLITUDE AND OTHER PEOPLE

Studies on flow have demonstrated repeatedly that more than anything else, the quality of life depends on two factors: how we experience work, and our relations with other people. The most detailed information about who we are as individuals comes from those we communicate with, and from the way we accomplish our jobs. Our self is largely defined by what happens in those two contexts, as Freud recognized in his prescription of “love and work” for happiness. The last chapter reviewed some of the flow potentials of work; here we will explore relationships with family and friends, to determine how they can become the source of enjoyable experiences.

Whether we are in the company of other people or not makes a great difference to the quality of experience. We are biologically programmed to find other human beings the most important objects in the world. Because they can make life either very interesting and fulfilling or utterly miserable, how we manage relationships with them makes an enormous difference to our happiness. If we learn to make our relations with others more like flow experiences, our quality of life as a whole is going to be much improved.

On the other hand, we also value privacy and often wish to be left alone. Yet it frequently turns out that as soon as we are, we begin to grow depressed. It is typical for people in this situation to feel lonely, to feel that there is no challenge, there is nothing to do. For some, solitude brings about in milder form the disorienting symptoms of sensory deprivation. Yet unless one learns to tolerate and even enjoy being alone, it is very difficult to accomplish any task that requires undivided concentration. For this reason, it is essential to find ways to control consciousness even when we are left to our own devices.

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN BEING ALONE AND BEING WITH OTHERS

Of the things that frighten us, the fear of being left out of the flow of human interaction is certainly one of the worst. There is no question that we are social animals; only in the company of other people do we feel complete. In many preliterate cultures solitude is thought to be so intolerable that a person makes a great effort never to be alone; only witches and shamans feel comfortable spending time by themselves. In many different human societies—Australian Aborigines, Amish farmers, West Point cadets—the worst sanction the community can issue is shunning. The person ignored grows gradually depressed, and soon begins to doubt his or her very existence. In some societies the final outcome of being ostracized is death: the person who is left alone comes to accept the fact that he must be already dead, since no one pays attention to him any longer; little by little he stops taking care of his body, and eventually passes away. The Latin locution for “being alive” was inter hominem esse, which literally meant “to be among men”; whereas “to be dead” was inter hominem esse desinere, or “to cease to be among men.

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