The Evolving Self - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Author:Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Language: eng
Format: epub

7

Evolution and

Flow

Helping to shape a more harmonious future is a noble ideal, but, one may ask, what’s in it for me? None of us is going to live long enough to see the long-term results of his or her actions, even assuming that they have any visible impact on history at all. So should we expect virtue to be its own and only reward, without any tangible benefits for those who sacrifice satisfaction in the present in order to build complexity in the long run?

In fact, when we struggle against entropy, we do get an immediate and very concrete reward from our actions: we enjoy whatever we are doing, moment by moment. The self is flooded with a sense of exhilaration when we undertake a task that requires complex skills, that leads to a challenging goal. In those moments we feel that, instead of suffering through events over which we have no control, we are creating our own lives.

In order to ensure their own continuation, evolutionary processes seem to have built into our nervous systems a preference for complexity. Just as we experience pleasure when we do things that are necessary for survival, as we do when we eat or have sex, so, too, do we experience enjoyment when we take on a project that stretches our skills in new directions, when we recognize and master new challenges. Every human being has this creative urge as his or her birthright. It can be squelched and corrupted, but it cannot be completely extinguished. This enjoyment that comes from surpassing ourselves, from mastering new obstacles, is the positive counterpart of the eternal dissatisfaction discussed in Chapter 2, and so well expressed by Goethe’s Faust.

Depending on the skills a person was bom with, or has cultivated during a lifetime, different activities will provide enjoyment and lead to complexity. For instance, everywhere around the world women (and, fortunately, many men, as well) enjoy bringing up their children. There are few things that are both so gratifying and at the same time so necessary for creating a more harmonious future. Here is a mother in one of the flow studies answering a question about what she considers the most satisfying experiences in her life:

Oh yes, when I’m working with my daughter; when she’s discovering something new. A new cookie recipe that she has accomplished, that she has made herself, an artistic work that she has done that she’s proud of. Her reading is one thing that she’s really into, and we read together. She reads to me, and I read to her, and that’s a time when I sort of lose touch with the rest of the world, I’m totally absorbed in what I’m doing.

Here we see the joy of creativity at two levels: the daughter’s fascination with discovery is itself a discovery for the mother, whose creation she is. Another woman describes the same feeling of extreme involvement and pleasure as she shares her skills and experiences of success with her older children:

I try

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