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.

Dancing Our Sorrow Away

When I was in College, the Jackson Browne album “Late for the Sky” was in heavy rotation on my apartment turntable. The album’s introspective songs had a certain appeal to a young man growing up and just starting to make his way in the world because they asked big questions about the purpose of life and how to think about all the tricky emotions that come with adulthood.

His song “For a Dancer” acknowledges one of the sad truths about life: that one day everyone and everything we love will be gone. Knowing this, Jackson sings that we owe it to those we love to make a joyful sound with our lives while we are here – and to do our best to spread seeds that will blossom long after we are gone.

Listen on Youtube to: Jackson Browne: “For a Dancer”

The final verse of the song reminds us that we all know people who have had a positive impact on our life (a teacher, coach, parent, friend) and who helped us to become who we are. Those people did great things for us, usually without knowing it. We are likewise called, Jackson sings, to have a positive impact on the lives we touch – even though we may never live to see the fruit of our labors.

Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive
And the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive
That you’ll never know

Jackson Browne “For a Dancer“

The song was written as a moving meditation on the death of Browne’s friend; who died in a fire at a young age. Browne explained that his friend was an interesting guy; a great dancer; a great tailor who would make his friend’s clothes; an ice skater who skated for the Ice Follies. “He was a Renaissance man and when I wrote him the song – I was trying to express the idea that your life is a dance”.

I like that image of our life as a dance and that we never know when it will be our last time on the stage. When I think of dancing, I think of being uninhibited, of letting my body react to the beat of the music, and of sharing a joyful personal moment with my dance partner.

When you are busy dancing, you are not worrying about your troubles, or the problems that that you will face tomorrow. Dancing is one of life’s rare human rituals; a moment of pure expression when you are able to forget about your ultimate fate and just focus on making a joyful noise.

A recent Youtube video created by the School of Life Company echoed a similar philosophy about the benefit of living life in the moment. The video was a commentary on the cultural expression “…rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic“, that is often used by people when they want to convey the futility or meaninglessness of a task.

Those familiar with the fate of the Titanic know that the hull was damaged and that the ship was destined to sink; so for the passengers on that ship to concern themselves with the position of the deck chairs is a failure on their part to recognize the true hopelessness of their situation.

Our life situation can become a little like passengers on a doomed liner. Our larger hopes in life have not come to fruition. We have come to see that our career won’t ever flourish; our relationships will always be less than ideal; we’ve passed our peak in terms of looks; our bodies begin to fall prey to ever more humiliating illnesses; society is becoming more dysfunctional than ever and political progress looks highly improbable.

It can start to feel like our ship is going down and that it would be silly trying to improve our condition, let alone find pleasure and distraction in our daily life. It would be to live in denial of the facts. Our instinct instead is to become pessimistic and gloomy about our ultimate end.

However, there is a crucial element which makes our predicament different from that of the passengers who lost their lives on the Titanic. Those passengers only had a few hours to contemplate their fate before the ship broke apart and sank into the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Our ship is going down too, but much more slowly. It’s as if the captain has let it be known that our ship is sinking and we can’t be rescued… but it will likely be a decade or more before we meet our final fate.

So, though we can’t be saved, though the end will be grim, we still have options as how to use our remaining time. We are involved in a catastrophe, but there are better and worse ways of passing the time and filling our days. Under those different circumstances, expending thought and effort on ‘rearranging the deck chairs‘ is no longer ridiculous at all, it becomes a logical step; one that can be turned into a higher calling.

When the larger hopes for our lives become impossible, we can learn to grow inventive around lesser, but still real, options for the time that remains. Keeping cheerful and engaged, in spite of everything, can bring some light through the dark storm clouds that you know are ahead.

Consider, for example, that you are on a very gradually sinking luxury liner in the early 20th century, you might every evening strive to put on a dinner jacket, dance the Foxtrot to the music of a string quartet, sing a cheerful song or settle into the ship’s library to read a good book – even as the water begins to pool at your ankles.

Or you might try to engage in a friendly game of shuffleboard on the slightly tilting deck; or decide to drop-in on a wild party in Steerage; help to comfort some despairing fellow travelers; or just try to have a deep and comforting conversation with a new friend – even though you can hear the sound of dishes smashing somewhere in a galley down below.

Of course your life would – from the big picture perspective – still remain a thorough disaster; but you might find that you were at least starting to enjoy yourself.

This kind of attitude and inventiveness is precisely what is need to help us cope with our state. Can we invest the days we have left with meaning even though everything is, overall, entirely dark? Our culture teaches us to focus on our big hopes, on how we can aim for everything going right. We crave a loving marriage, deeply satisfying and richly rewarding work, a stellar reputation, an ideal body and positive social change. What remains when those things are not attainable – when love will always be tricky, politics compromised, or the crowd hostile?

What is our equivalent to seeking the best spot for a deckchair on a sinking Ocean Liner? If marriage is far less blissful than we’d imagined, perhaps we can turn to friendship; if society won’t accord us the dignity we deserve, perhaps we can find a group of fellow outcasts; if our careers have irretrievably faltered, perhaps we can turn to new interests or hobbies; if political progress turns out to be perennially blocked and the news is always sour, we might absorb ourselves in nature or history.

In doing this, we would be turning to what our society might dismiss as Plan-B’s (what you do when you can’t do the things you really want to do). But there’s nothing wrong with that! It just may turn out that the secondary, lesser, lighter, reasons for living are, in fact, more substantial and enjoyable than we imagined.

And after a while we might come to think that they are what we should have been focused on all along – only it has taken a seeming disaster to get us to realize how central they should always have been.

My mother has always been a model to me of this kind of inventive thinking and an example of someone who has always been able to discover new things to do when she can no longer do the things she loves doing.

Now in her 94th year, she has good reasons to be gloomy about her present condition. Her ship has been slowly sinking over the last two decades. She is the last surviving member of her large, close knit, family; she lost her beloved husband after 66 years of marriage; she reads about the passing of friends and acquaintances almost every day in the obituaries; she has lived through several strokes and cardiac operations to place stents in her arteries; she struggles with gradual loss of hearing, eyesight, teeth and memory as well as the humiliating indignities of incontinence and lack of mobility that come with aging.

Despite these life difficulties, it is not in my mother’s nature to be gloomy. She laments what she has lost, yet she finds a reason to be optimistic about her situation and to be happy with the things that she can do. Here are some of the ways my mother has learned to stay cheerful, smiling and engaged in her diminished old age:

• She has learned to navigate an iPad so she can keep track of the Facebook lives of her eight children and dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
• She has become a late-in life sports fan, following with anticipation the exploits of her favorite New England Patriots and Boston Red Sox teams.
• She volunteers for her Church prayer line ministry, spending time each day praying for those in her parish who are in most need.
• She visits her husband’s grave regularly to sit in contemplation and tend to the flowers and plants.
• She tries to include some form of bodily exercise every day. Short walks with her walker outside on nice days, elderly chair exercises, rubber band stretching exercises.
• She communicates with her smart speaker to listen to music or hear the news (even though she worries about Alexa eavesdropping on her conversations).
• She stays engaged by reading books and bingeing her favorite TV shows.
• She visits French Youtube language web sites so she can enjoy hearing and practicing the French language that she grew up speaking.
• She has become the project manager of her house, assigning her children work to do around the house that she has historically done in the past and overseeing it to make sure it is done to her standards.
• She takes short field trips with her children to places from her past and shares happy memories of the people and events that shaped her life.

I co-share caretaker duties with my siblings and I feel blessed to spend one or two days every week with my mother. It has been a privilege for me to watch how she accommodates the frailties of old age without sacrificing her spirit. She knows the end is near, but she is not afraid; and until the end comes she is determined to wake up with a reason for living – and make sure the deck chairs are properly arranged on the deck.

May we too always find a way to dance our sorrows away.

No Gain without some Pain

When the Coronavirus epidemic first began to shut down the economy and close the schools, the audio book company Audible announced that they would offer free access to a collection of classic audio books – “so that kids everywhere can instantly stream an incredible collection of stories… that will help them continue dreaming, learning, and just being kids“.

I took advantage of Audible’s generosity by listening to several classic novels, one of which was Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray“. The 1890 novel tells the story of of a cultured, wealthy, and impossibly beautiful young man named Dorian Gray.

Dorian’s artist friend Basil, is so taken by Dorian’s appearance and noble bearing that he badgers him into sitting for a portrait. While putting the finishing touches on the portrait, which elegantly depicts the young Dorian as a handsome mythological figure, Dorian is introduced to Lord Henry Wotton.

Lord Henry is an upper-class intellectual who is popular in social circles for his amusing wit and charms, and for his selfish pursuit of pleasure. Upon observing Dorian’s portrait, Lord Henry praises it as a masterpiece and proceeds to give a speech about the transient nature of beauty and youth.

The speech worries the impressionable young Dorian because he begins to realize that over time his most impressive youthful characteristics will inevitably begin to fade. This leads Dorian to curse his portrait, because he sees it will only come to remind him of the lost beauty he once had. In a fit of distress, he pledges his soul if only the painting would take on the burden of his age while he remained forever young.

His wish is granted. Throughout the years, Dorian’s friends age while he stays the same. His picture, however, gradually changes over time to reflect his increasingly evil and corrupt lifestyle.

Lord Henry corrupts Dorian’s mind and soul by encouraging him to live a life dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure. He gives Dorian a book describing the wicked exploits of a nineteenth-century Frenchman which becomes Dorian’s bible as he sinks ever deeper into a life of sin and corruption.

He lives a selfish lifestyle devoted to garnering new experiences and pleasures, with no regard for conventional standards of morality or the consequences of his actions.

Eighteen years pass. Dorian’s reputation suffers in circles of polite London society, where rumors spread regarding his scandalous exploits. His peers nevertheless continue to accept him because he remains young and beautiful. Meanwhile, the figure in the painting that is locked away in Dorian’s attic grows increasingly hideous. 

Near the end of the novel, Lord Henry asks Dorian how it is that he has managed to remain so young after all these years. He wants to know the secret behind what he believes is Dorian’s “exquisite” life.  

“Tell me Dorian how you have kept your youth. You must have some secret. I am only ten years older than you are, and I am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow. But you are really wonderful, Dorian. You have never looked more charming than you do to-night. You remind me of the day I saw you first. You were rather cheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary. You have changed, of course, but not in appearance. I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.”

Quote from “Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde

While listening to this novel, it struck me how strong the human longing is for eternal youth and how many schemes have been promoted over the years promising quick and painless ways to achieve it.

Since the beginning of recorded history, people have been searching for a Fountain of Youth. Tales of a mythical spring that can restore the youth of anyone who drinks or bathes in its waters show up in many historical writings – some dating as far back as the 5th century BC.

Based on these many legends, early explorers and adventurers looked for the elusive fountain, or some other remedy generally associated with magic waters, that when drunk or bathed in would reverse the aging process and cure sickness.

Even today, society’s unending pursuit to find some type of easy ‘medicine’ that will keep us forever young continues strong. One of the songs from 79 year old Bob Dylan’s latest album wistfully praises Key West as the place where the rejuvenating virtues of the sun and wind can be found:

Key West is the place to be
If you’re looking for immortality
Stay on the road, follow the highway sign
Key West is fine and fair
If you lost your mind, you will find it there
Key West is on the horizon line

Lyrics from “Key West (Philosopher Pirate)” by Bob Dylan

Fortunately for those of us living today, modern medicine and the discovery of life-saving vaccines have delivered on the promise of extending the human lifespan.

According to the organization Our World in Data, the average global life expectancy for the human species when Oscar Wilde was writing his book was 29 years old. By 1950, the average life expectancy had increased to 46 years – and by 2015 it had grown to 71 years. So, in the course of approximately 200 years mankind has successfully managed to more than double the average human lifespan.

Despite the incredible advances made by the medical and scientific communities to increase our longevity, science teaches us that nobody can live forever – everyone has an expiration date.

There is a ceiling on human lifespan. The longest living person as verified by the Gerontology Research Group was a French woman named Jeanne Calment who died in 1997 at the age of 122.

Theoretical studies suggest that the maximum lifespan a human can achieve under circumstances that are optimal to longevity is approximately 125 years. The process of aging itself constrains our lifespan, which means that until mankind figures out a way to stop aging, not just treat or prevent specific diseases, there isn’t much chance humans will be able to increase their maximum lifespan beyond that age.

Though we accept there is no fountain of youth or chance at immortality, we also know that certain lifestyle habits can help us stay healthy and younger looking as we grow older. Scientists have provided overwhelming evidence that the following lifestyle habits positively contribute to human health and longevity:

• Maintain Healthy Body Weight – Maintaining a healthy body weight lowers the risk of developing diseases and conditions associated with aging such as diabetes, clogged arteries, heart attacks and strokes. People who limit their calorie intake have healthier heart muscle elasticity, blood pressure and inflammatory markers.
• Eat Smart – A healthful diet includes a variety of fruits and vegetables of many colors, whole grains and starches, good fats, and lean proteins. Eating healthfully also means avoiding processed foods with high amounts of added salt and sugar. A 2015 study showed that eating a healthy diet slows cognitive decline, improves bone strength and enhances gastro-intestinal health.
• Exercise – Working out helps combat the loss of bone density and muscle mass that naturally occurs in our skeletons as we get older. A study, published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine concluded that 70-year-olds who regularly lift weights had as much muscle as 28-year-olds. Consistent mobilizing and stretching of our bodies also helps to reduce the effects of aging on joints and muscles.
• Sleep – Sleep acts as a true fountain of youth for our bodies by providing a pathway for our bodies to repair and rejuvenate itself. People who get a good night’s sleep report feeling more alert, energetic, happier, and better able to function. Research shows that sleep plays a critical role in our immune system, metabolism, muscle growth, tissue repair, memory, learning, and growth hormones. It clears away all of the harmful by-products of the cells’ activities that are produced while we are awake. Sleep is so important to our functioning, that animals who are entirely deprived of it lose all immune function and die in just a matter of weeks.
• Form Connections – Positive social connections with other people and a belief in a higher power have been shown to improve physical health and mental and emotional well-being. One landmark study published by Science Magazine showed that lack of social connection is a greater detriment to health than obesity, smoking and high blood pressure. Strong social connections were shown to strengthen our immune systems, help us to recover faster from disease and increase our longevity. People who feel more connected to others have lower levels of anxiety and depression, higher self-esteem, and greater empathy for others.
• Minimize Environmental Toxins – Prolonged exposure to harsh environmental toxins like smoke, pollution, direct sunlight and loud noise can damage and prematurely age our bodies. Without protection from the sun’s rays, daily exposure can cause noticeable changes and damage to the skin and facial wrinkles start forming on the faces of smokers as young as 20.

We have all been given a map that shows us how to maximize our longevity and stay feeling young and healthy for as long as possible. So why is it that so many of us, myself included, have such a hard time changing our lifestyles to adopt these healthy lifestyle habits?

We know what we should do to maintain our health but our human nature gets in the way, making it difficult for us to sacrifice those momentary un-healthy pleasures that tempt us every day for the promise of benefits that we hope to see sometime in the future.

Most people tend to choose the path of least resistance. It is difficult for many people to limit calories and maintain a healthy body weight; it is unpleasant to eliminate unhealthy foods that you love and replace them with healthy foods you do not enjoy; it is painful to motivate yourself to exercise when you feel tired; it takes discipline to shut off today’s 24/7 news and entertainment options so that we do not shortchange our sleep cycles; it takes commitment to cultivate and nourish our social networks; and it is almost humanly impossible to overcome chemical addictions that become rooted in us.

All of those things are hard so it is no wonder that many of us are like Lord Henry Wotten, who strongly desires the youthful qualities he sees in Dorian, but is also unwilling to suffer any pains to his lifestyle habits or pleasures in order to achieve the gains he covets.

The challenge for all of us is to develop the strength to reject our instant gratification tendencies and to keep in mind the eventual long term rewards that we hope to accrue from today’s short term pains. It helps to think of the struggle we are in today as developing the strength we need to have a better tomorrow. As Coco Chanel once remarked, “Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; but it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.”

I do not fear death because I see both birth and death as good things. Death frees up the planet’s limited resources to make room for the next generation and drives us to live purpose-driven lives. But I am apprehensive of a future in which I gradually deteriorate as I age because of sickness, feebleness, pain and cognitive decline. I imagine that living life with those age-related conditions would cause my life to lose much of its flavor.

My goal is to stay healthy and active up until the day I die. I know that is probably unrealistic but at least it is a goal that keeps me motivated to put up with the pains that come with pursuing healthy lifestyle habits.

Even though I often fail by making unhealthy lifestyle choices, I do not give up trying to achieve my goal. Because doing something is better than doing nothing and winning some of the time is better than giving up altogether.

The surprising thing I have found is that the more I try, the easier it gets. I actually feel better when I eat healthy, exercise, get enough sleep and connect with friends and family. The effort to live healthy doesn’t have to make us miserable – it can pay dividends that make us happy both in the short and the long term.

So, unlike Dorian Gray, I hope the picture of your journey shows a full life that is well-lived; and may you be healthy and happy until the day you die.