Just Finished Reading: The Antidote – Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman (FP: 2012)

It’s relentless, really it is. The idea that we need to be positive – all the bloody time. That you can’t even speculate about what might go wrong in case thinking makes it so. Accentuate the positive and eliminate the word ‘impossible’ from your mental processes and everything you wish for will be yours – or at least the latest best-selling self-help book or motivational speaker will tell you. But if you fail at your dreams you have only one person to blame – that’s you, for being too negative, for having doubts, for not believing enough for the Universe to give you what you’ve always known you deserve. Of course, being human in a world of infinite desire means that failure to achieve at least some of your dreams (dream BIG remember!) is inevitable – not everyone can be President after all (although it’s apparently true – indeed proven – that actually anyone can run for President and succeed beyond their own dreams). Which naturally means when belief hits reality you’re going to be disappointed and probably miserable into the bargain. But what can be done? Fortunately two schools of thought are readily available to come to the rescue and, if not always providing clear answers at least provide a practical roadmap to help navigate an often unforgiving world: Stoicism and Buddhism.

The author maintains (and I agree) that we – in the West at least – try far too hard to be happy. Not only do we have an ever increasing pharmacy of drugs to wipe the blues away we are afraid to feel unhappy and positively terrified to tell people about how unhappy we are. Unhappiness equals in many people’s minds simple failure. With the world at our feet there is no excuse not to be up and running. But, the author maintains, it is this relentless and endless pursuit of happiness that is the cause of so much unhappiness and anxiety in the world. One way out of this trap is a Stoic method of imagining the Worse-Case Scenario of any action or project. Ask yourself as you venture out each day – What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Of course most days everything will be fine and you’ll soon realise that things could be much, much worse. Things are actually pretty OK to what they could be. As an added advantage when things DO go wrong you’ve been thinking about them so much that you’ll be mentally (and maybe practically) prepared for almost anything – which still won’t be as bad as they COULD have been!

It’s but a small step from thinking how bad things could be to realising that we cannot control the future and that we shouldn’t even try. Control of anything external to yourself is an illusion anyway. Just try to control the simplest thing in your life and you’ll realise it can’t be done. Once you learn this fact and accept that the only thing you can really control (mostly) is how you react to things that are beyond your control. You can’t control the weather – but you can make sure you check the forecast in the morning and then dress appropriately. Remember – there’s no such thing as bad weather just inappropriate clothing. So it is with many things in life including the artificial goals that we set for ourselves. Of course we spend a great deal of time and effort trying to make ourselves happy but such a thing might we be impossible if the ‘self’ does not really exist in the first place. It’s an idea that’s been around for quite a while – especially in Buddhist teachings - and the author has some very interesting things to say on the subject.

Then, of course, there is failure and the ultimate failure of all: death. Knowing that someday we’ll be dead is nothing to avoid maintains the author. Indeed the conscious denial of death not only cannot be maintained except with increasing levels of narcotic rejection but acceptance of our limited time here makes every moment and every experience that much more precious – not in the way of panic where life experiences are gobbled down like candy but savoured like a rare bottle of fine wine. In so many ways life is defined by its limits – by death. This is really nothing to be greatly afraid of. Dying might well indeed be a short and unpleasant experience but death itself cannot be experienced because you are dead and cannot, therefore, experience anything.

There’s not a huge amount in here that I haven’t come across before but the interesting mix of the Stoic and the Buddhist (both of which interest me intensely – especially the Stoics) gives plenty to think about as a rational and well thought out alternative to all of the daily crap we’re expected to believe, buy into and say thank you for. If you can’t stand the way we are ‘supposed’ to act or feel or respond but want something more than rejection without anything else to move towards then this is definitely the book for you. The blend of Stoicism and Buddhism might not answer all of your problems but it’s a damned good place to start out from. Recommended.(R)