Heroes Not Zombies

Lovely piece on the School of Life site considering active and passive paths to wellness. The yin yang symbol is one of the most potent symbols we have – I wear one around my neck. One aspect of the symbol is the representation of a dynamic balance of active and passive principles. Taking this idea, Jules Evans writes about a session at the School of Life where representatives of each of these models tell their stories.

The active form of well-being lies in the happiness of pursuit, striving after a goal, making things happen. Its great champion is Aristotle, who defined happiness as a vital activity of the soul. The other form of well-being is passive. It finds happiness in the renunciation of the will – not in making things happen, but in accepting things happening as they do. This is the approach of the Stoics and Epicureans, both of whom define happiness as freedom from desire, and also of the Buddhists and Taoists.

I like this idea. My daily practice of medicine is grounded on the belief that all human beings are unique and by active, non-judgmental listening, I can come to understand the particular worldviews, coping strategies and pathological changes within each patient I meet (and, of course, how these are all linked). One consequence of this approach is to realise that different people have very different approaches to wellness. And that, fundamentally, is ok. There really is no one size fits all, and there is always an alternative.

Representing the Yang school of well-being, there is the entrepreneur Robert Kelsey, full of energy, leaping from mission to mission (‘first I was a journalist, then a banker, then a writer, then an entrepreneur’), picking himself up when a mission fails, only to launch himself on another voyage……[and, on the other hand, Ed Halliwell]….tells us that he only found peace from his battle with depression when he stopped “desperately striving to change my situation. When I did, a curious thing happened: my depression lifted”. Meditation is, he says, the opposite of striving: “It’s impossible to strive to do it. The process is about sitting and observing, being in the moment, rather than striving.”