Contents
We strive for something, experience failures, suffer from stress, are always in a hurry … and only dream of enjoying peace. Peace of mind often seems unattainable to us. But don’t we confuse it with a lifeless spiritual calm?
Basic Ideas
- Recognize your internal contradictions and conflicts as part of your own life.
- Get out of the race: unbridled consumption cannot fill the inner void.
- Decide to meet yourself face to face in order to know yourself better and find balance.
To be excited, not to find a place for oneself, to noticeably worry … The English word restless (literally “without rest”) appears with exceptional constancy in the titles of films and albums, portraits of politicians and interviews with stars * … It very accurately conveys a state of tension, temporary or chronic , a feeling of inner turmoil or agitation that prevents the body and spirit from finding peace. Excitement and anxiety are emotional states that are well known to each of us: an unfinished business, a dispute with a loved one, financial difficulties, fear of change … Happy events also throw us off balance: falling in love, housewarming or just the beginning of a vacation. Even in our ordinary life, there are many reasons for the emergence of emotional storms. And very often they begin in a relationship … with yourself.
Tangle of contradictions
The philosopher Seneca saw in the “dissatisfaction with ourselves” inherent in many of us as the main obstacle to what he considered the highest goal of man – “peace of the soul” **. From dissatisfaction with oneself stems, in his opinion, a number of unacceptable ways of behavior, including inconstancy, dissatisfaction, passivity, nostalgia or fear of the new. These are the “toxins” that poison our perception of reality and prevent us from accepting ourselves and others with a light heart.
Meanwhile, in order to get away from dissatisfaction with oneself and come to relative satisfaction, in order to feel internally comfortable, one must at least know oneself a little. At least in order to more accurately see our strengths and weaknesses and set realistic goals for ourselves, which are more likely to bring us satisfaction than to cause the bitterness of failure.
Without looking into ourselves, how to hear and recognize our true desires, how to make sure that the ambitions and dreams that make us move forward are ours? How, finally, to find peace of mind, if we do not know (or deny) that sometimes diametrically opposed aspirations are simultaneously operating in us? “It is impossible to achieve any kind of unity of our being without realizing the contradictions that make it up,” says psychotherapist Alexander Orlov. “Our desires are inherently fluid and ambiguous.”
You only need to look at our hopes for happiness to see how complex they are. We desire peace of mind and long to experience great, passionate love; we want to be recognized and appreciated – but in such a way that we are not obliged to anyone; we would like to enjoy the present and at the same time do not stop living in the future, near or far … We are all made up of such paradoxes. They should be recognized and accepted in order to avoid a considerable number of troubles that they can give rise to. “Peace of mind is not a synonym for cloudless calm,” emphasizes the psychotherapist. – We can also find it in tension, in discomfort from the clash of our internal conflicting sides. But in order to achieve relative peace with ourselves, to ease inner tension, first of all we need to give up the desire to control everything – in ourselves and around us.”
“WE RARELY USE UNTASKED TIME FOR NEW THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS, SEEING IN IT A LOST CHANCE TO DO SOMETHING.”
Faster, more, better!
To perceive the world in the spirit of Zen, to take a break from conflicts, to find inner peace – today our longing for serenity has a lot of reasons. But the conditions for achieving this serenity in our days have developed extremely unsuccessful, says psychoanalyst Jacques Arènes: “Returning to yourself is one of the conditions for finding peace within yourself. But we live in a society that relies on productivity, efficiency, achievement. The concept of “acting” is central to the modern concept of a worthwhile life. No gaps, no breaks, no pauses: you have to fill the schedule! Unoccupied time is rarely seen as an opportunity for reflection, nurturing ideas, more often as a missed chance to do something.
Elena, 36, an interior designer, complains about the hectic pace of life: parties and parties are an important component of her professional success, so she does not always manage to lighten her schedule, although she admits that she lives “on the verge of nervous exhaustion.” Anton, a 44-year-old realtor, takes no more than two weeks of vacation a year so as not to disappear for a long time. In other words, not to be bypassed. 39-year-old Olga, a mother of three, admits that she would like to become less anxious, ask herself fewer disturbing questions in order to enjoy being with her family more. Society demands that we bridle our time and gallop it to new achievements. This perfectionism – when every day and every minute everything needs to be done even more and even better, the psychoanalyst considers a sign of our era: “Behind external hyperactivity, usually only the fear of emptiness is hidden, the feeling that your life will become boring and empty if you don’t do everything ideally”.
And what is the answer we most often find when faced with this fear of emptiness? Consume! Everything in a row: things, entertainment, emotions, relationships. “We are trying to maximize the pleasures that our culture gives us, so we are chasing wealth, power and sexuality. However, it is impossible to improve the quality of life in this way,” writes psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi***.
Looking outside for the same peace that we lack inside? But this is at least illogical! However, that is exactly what we do, trying at all costs not to come face to face with ourselves. Maybe it’s time for us to slow down a bit to say to ourselves: “I’m ready for this meeting”?
“Occupation of a lifetime”
“We need to put things in order in our mental economy,” calls the Orthodox priest, writer, publicist and memoirist Mikhail Ardov. And at the same time he warns: self-complacency, self-satisfaction are detrimental to the life of our soul.
Psychologies: Isn’t your memoir a way to come to terms with yourself?
Mikhail Ardov: In no case! I write my memoirs because the Lord set me up with interesting people, and I think that now this is the best reading – because life is much more interesting than any fiction. Anyone who sets complete inner peace and satisfaction as his main goal, spiritually perishes. If we turn to fiction, we see that perfectly balanced people become uninteresting as heroes. A real, deep, reasonable person cannot always be in a state of calm, as this is fraught with indifference and selfishness. In the Christian understanding of life, one must strive for salvation: first, to the enlightenment of the mind, then to the purification of the heart.
How to achieve this?
Mikhail Ardov: Not many people know that prudence is considered the main Christian virtue. That is, the ability to analyze what is happening inside and outside of you. The one who has external and internal in conflict should first of all stop, look around, try to examine his state – both moral and mental – and put things in order in this mental economy. Try to realistically assess your capabilities and compare them with your ambitions; do not indulge in feelings of envy and anger, but cultivate the best in yourself – peacefulness, compassion, love. And start with helping the closest, striving to ensure that there are no conflicts in the family.
Recorded by Maria Filippenko
* Restless – the most famous novel by Scottish writer William Boyd; Restless Heart is an album by Whitesnake (a British-American hard rock band), Restless and Wild is an album by Accept (a German heavy metal rock band). Restless Breed is a classic 1958 western directed by Alla Duane, but simply Restless is a 2008 film by Amos Kollek, Israel’s greatest filmmaker…
** “Philosophical Treatises”. Aletheia, 2001; “Moral Letters to Lucilius”. AST, 2006.
*** See more details on the website www.psychologies.ru “Dossier” on the topic “Finding the Keys to Happiness”.