Industry is the Enemy of Melancholy

I was fortunate to retire from my traditional work career at the relatively young age of 56. Retiring early had become a goal of mine ever since I observed how much my father enjoyed his 30 year post-work life. My father was perfectly content to leave the working life behind and fill up his days with fishing, tending his vegetable garden, solving the daily crossword puzzle, taking naps and watching the home town Sports teams on his television.

When the time came for me to retire, I had an idyllic vision of spending my days in similar fashion. Finally, after 56 years, I was looking forward to being my own boss – thrilled to have the opportunity to wake up every day and do whatever it was that interested me. I believed that every day would feel like Christmas!

And those first few months of retirement really were magical. Gone was the stress of having to be available 24/7 to my company’s sales and management teams who were battling to close million dollar deals, gone was the daily 3 to 4 hour commute in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and gone was the chronic sleep deficit.

It was goodbye to all that. What replaced it was the pleasure of deciding which book to read from my list of “books I always wanted to read“, fly fishing in the beautiful rivers of New England, taking long rides on my electric bike, spending quality time with my grandkids, and attending stimulating concerts and plays with my wife.

Something begin to happen, however, that I was not expecting about six months into my retirement. As the novelty and thrill of being retired began to subside I began to notice that I was experiencing melancholy moods and moments of soul searching. I was spending time reflecting on topics like past loss, the certainty of my physical and mental decline, and the uncertainty of how future generations will deal with the big existential challenges the world is facing.

Without the rigors of work to occupy my attention, my mind was set free to wander where it wanted to go and to my surprise I discovered that it often wanted to contemplate dark and doleful topics. I was not that concerned about these sometime melancholy moods because I reasoned that it is one of life’s natural reactions to harbor feelings of both happiness and sadness; and I remembered the wise old grandmother who once said: “A good day is a laugh and a cry“. Still I wondered why my pensive thoughts were increasing in frequency at a time in my life when I expected to be most content.

Then I happened to read about a study conducted by Harvard psychologists Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert which could help to explain the phenomenon I was experiencing. These researchers developed a smartphone app that allowed them to collect the thoughts, feelings, and actions of a broad range of people at random moments as they went about their daily activities.

Using the app, Killingsworth and Gilbert asked people what they were doing and how happy they were while doing it. They sifted through 25,000 responses from more than 5000 people and reported that 46% of the people were thinking about things other than what they were actually doing at the time (in other words, they were daydreaming about something other than what they were doing). They discovered that those people who were daydreaming typically were not happy; while those who were fully engaged in their activity were the happiest. 

The researchers wrote that unlike other animals, human beings spend a lot of time thinking about what is not going on around them, contemplating instead events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or will never happen at all. This “stimulus-independent thought” or “mind wandering” appears to be the brain’s default mode of operation.

Although this ability is a remarkable evolutionary achievement that allows people to learn, reason, and plan, it apparently comes with an emotional cost. “We see evidence that a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind,” they said in their report. The bottom line is that we’re more likely to think negative thoughts when we let our minds wander.

Maybe that is why people who are waiting in line or stuck in traffic appear to be more irritable. And maybe my melancholy moods have increased in frequency since leaving work simply because my mind is no longer required to spend 10+ hours a day focused on the demands of my job.

This study confirms that many philosophical and religious traditions are on to something true when they teach that happiness is to be found by living in the moment, and by training their practitioners to resist mind wandering and concentrate on the here and now. Yoga teachers and those teaching meditation practices usually stress the importance of “mindfulness” or “being present” for a good reason — because when we do, it usually puts us in a better mood.

When I look back at my work career, I can see now that those moments when I felt most fulfilled was when I was in the middle of product development activities, being part of a team inventing electronic test solutions to solve complex manufacturing challenges. During those moments all the powers of my mind were fully engaged in solving the problem at hand and there was a sense that the results of the team’s collective work would have a positive impact on the company, our customers, and to a certain extent, society in general.

William F. Buckley put his finger on the unique ability that meaningful work has in preventing the onset of depressive feelings when he wrote “Industry is the enemy of Melancholy“. Simply put, if we are busy doing work that requires a focused mind it becomes difficult for the mind to wander and contemplate spirit dampening topics that are likely to cause the blues.

I happened to listen to an online homily about work that touched on a similar theme from a spiritual point of view that was given by Bishop Robert Barron. Bishop Barron made the point that our very being is deeply influenced by our actions and that the kind of work we do has a lot to do with the kind of people we become.

People who have no work usually struggle with depression because our sense of dignity often comes from work. Those who suffer from unemployment feel not just the financial burden of a lost paycheck, but also the loss of dignity brought about from the loss of their livelihood.

When you are feeling down one of the things psychologists recommend is to get to work on a project. It tends to make you feel better because work engages the powers of mind, will, creativity, and imagination and we become awakened when we give ourselves over to a project.

It doesn’t have to be a grand or complicated project. In fact, Bishop Barron mentioned that he found that one of the things that brings him the most satisfaction is doing the dishes. His day is usually filled with meetings and intellectual activities, so it is a relief for him to do some simple physical work at the end of the day. It brings him satisfaction to make order out of a dirty kitchen and to see everything clean and in its place when he is done.

The Bishop referenced this lyric from Bob Dylan’s song “Forever Young” to emphasize that work is a blessing and that souls can not fully prosper when their hands and feet are idle.

“May your hands always be busy, may your feet always be swift, may you have a strong foundation when the winds of changes shift”

Bob Dylan; Forever Young

Not all work is physical, though. Pope John Paul II categorized different kinds of work for the faithful. There is physical work (the work of the body), intellectual work (the work of the mind), spiritual work (the feeding of one’s soul), and moral work (charitable work on behalf of the poor and mistreated). When we are attentive to each of these categories of work in our daily life, it is then that we best fulfill our divine potential and become collaborators with the purpose of God.

I like that idea. May we all come to see our work, in all its different manifestations, as collaborating with the purpose of God and as bringing us into a more perfect union with a higher power.

Feeling Like a Stranger Nobody Sees

Bob Dylan recently celebrated his 80th birthday by releasing a film noir streaming art movie of him singing songs from his early career. The movie was filmed entirely in black & white and was appropriately named Shadow Kingdom because throughout the film dark shadows obscure the musicians and most of the surroundings.

Screenshot from Bob Dylan’s Shadow Kingdom Film

The set reminded me of something right out of an old twilight zone episode, a 1940’s style dark and smoky nightclub where the dozen or so people in the barroom sit at tables with their drinks and cigarettes, or mingle out on the dance floor slowly grooving to the music of Bob’s four piece band.

I realized while watching that Bob was clearly the oldest person in the film – there doesn’t appear to be a person in the band or in the audience who is older than 40 – most appear to be in their 20’s and 30’s. I’m not sure if it was his intention, but it would not surprise me to learn that Bob specifically wanted to surround himself with young people. After all, he is the man who wrote Forever Young and the one who made famous the observation that “He not busy being born is busy dying“.

For Bob it seems as if age is not a number but an attitude, and throughout his career he has refused to become a nostalgia act or to live on his past glories. Instead he has continuously changed and reinvented himself; and along the way he has succeeded in making music that is relevant and appealing to every generation. One look at the mix of young and old faces at his concerts demonstrates his ability to speak to all ages.

Which is difficult to do because in today’s society the elderly are often overlooked by the young. As people get older, they often get the feeling that they are being ignored and that they are becoming invisible within their communities. A couple lyrics from Bob Dylan’s later songs indicate that even someone as famous as him is not immune from this feeling.

Walking through the leaves, falling from the trees
Feeling like a stranger nobody sees

Lyrics from song Mississippi by Bob Dylan

I see people in the park forgetting their troubles and woes
They’re drinking and dancing, wearing bright-colored clothes
All the young men with their young women looking so good
Well, I’d trade places with any of them
In a minute, if I could

Lyrics from song Highlands by Bob Dylan

In these lyrics, Bob ponders the predicament which many old people find themselves in. Just when they should start feeling fortunate for reaching their seventh or eighth decade of life, their bodies become old and frail and they find themselves becoming unvalued outsiders. It seems as if the world speeds up and they just become spectators to life happening around them.

Strangers who once smiled and acknowledged them as they walked past begin passing by without even a glance. They become self-conscious about their appearance and failing senses and withdraw further into isolation, sadly contributing towards their own “invisibility”.

The author Helen Garner, in her 2015 essay The Insults of Age, writes that women especially have always had an acute awareness of growing old. Her essay explores all the cruel ways in which getting older means being erased from a culture that equates youth and beauty with value. “Your face is lined, and your hair is grey, so they think you are weak, deaf, helpless, ignorant and stupid. It is assumed that you have no opinions and no standards of behavior and that nothing that happens in your vicinity is any of your business.”

My father as he got older suffered from COPD (which made it a struggle for him to breathe) and hearing decline (which made it hard for him to follow group conversations). Despite this, he was beloved by his eight children for his wisdom, good nature, and the code of honor with which he lived his life.

But I remember my mother telling me about an incident that occurred that was very hurtful to my father when he was older. There were a group of people sitting around the table having a discussion about a specific topic. My father ventured to offer his opinion on the subject when one of the young people interrupted and told him that “Nobody really cares what you think“.

Those words were a shock for my father to hear. He was a man of integrity who was used to being treated with respect and dignity throughout his life and whose opinion was always highly valued. To bluntly be told that nobody cared what he thought was like a slap in the face. With incidences like this happening to the elderly is it any wonder why they become confused and retreat into isolation?

There was a time in the past when the elderly were revered, cared for, and sought out for their wisdom. It seems that today they are instead viewed as a burden and out of touch with the way the world operates. There is a generation of people that are overlooked every day.

Age should not define a person or diminish respect from others. According to the American Psychological Association, people who do not feel connected are at increased risk of depression, dementia, and poor self-esteem – all factors that can affect physical and mental health and overall life satisfaction.

And this problem between the generations is only likely to get worse as aging adults shuffle themselves off into sterile retirement communities that bill themselves as “God’s Waiting Room” while young adults flock to the vibrancy and vitality of urban cities. Both sides lose in this segregation of the generations as it becomes difficult for the young to imagine what their life might look like when they are older and the old forget what it is like to see the world for the first time through new eyes.

In a society that idolizes youth and youth culture, it can be difficult to understand and address the challenges older adults face. Changing society’s perception of the elderly is beyond me, but I can try to go out of my way to fully engage with the older adults I encounter in my day-to-day activities – to show them that I see them and that they are not invisible!

If each of us made a small effort to be friendly with the older adults we encounter, to listen to what they have to say and to treat them with dignity, then we would all be richer for the experience. Old folks have a lifetime of experiences to share and many interesting stories to tell – if we only give them the chance.

Perhaps there is a selfish motivation behind my efforts to fight the stigma of aging. After all, pretty soon I will be considered an old timer (my ten year old grandson already calls me an oldster); and I hope people will still see me and treat me with dignity as my body runs down. Invisibility is a good Superpower to have in the movies but, I imagine it must get pretty lonely in real life when nobody ever really sees you.