In an article by our blogger Renata Schiavo, published not earlier than two weeks ago, I read about the word ‘resilience’ and how its abuse has put a huge pressure on our work and private life. In her article, Schiavo dwells on the paradox of how trying so hard to ‘get over it’ is getting us more burnout than ever.
Reading the article I recalled something I studied in my North-American Literature classes. It was something about the myth Americans built around the concept of the pursuit of happiness. Nothing new really, just the fact that the American dream, the pursuit of happiness tout court, is a mythological entity, whose lore has been perpetrated by those who need you to keep working. Pity that it has been proven that this so-called pursuit of happiness presents different levels of difficulty according to the amount of privilege you were born with: class, gender, ethnicity, and so on.
One month ago or so, I put in one of my stories a question box, asking my followers —very few, they more or less coincide with my friends and good acquaintances— how they were doing. I got thirty replies to that story, and only one person told me they were fine. One. Out of thirty. It didn’t come out as much of a surprise though. It could be possible that this very empiric poll could be failed since the sample is taken from my personal bubble, and I tend to surround myself with very smart and sensitive people, whom I believe —and not just me— are more prone to disillusionment, helplessness, disbelief and melancholy.
However, the internet is full of memes on how difficult life has become for everyone of us: inflation, exponentially increasing demand for skills just to land a decent job, low wages, constant reminders by social media of how people look better than you (effortlessly!!), hustle culture telling you that you’re not enough and last but not least pandemics, climate change, and wars taking over the planet.
In short: it seems like a lot of people are sad these days. But what does it have to do with Resilience? As Renata puts it, it looks like we tend to put too much weight on our shoulders, demanding ourselves more and more effort, not asking for help because we think we are just not doing enough. Happiness is just not something you deserve, it is something you have to achieve.
Don’t get me wrong: there is nothing bad with being happy. I love being happy. I am sure I have happy friends here and there, and they are not dumb at all, they just achieved something that a lot of us find more and more difficult: don’t ask too much of themselves.
Countless psychologists studies and scholars tell us that the key to serenity —if not happiness— is to take it easier, to stop pursuing inhuman models of productivity and overachievement and to start taking care of yourself. Then why, if we have the key to try out happiness to ourselves, we just won’t dig in? There is not just one answer to that, but one reason could probably be FoMO.
FoMO: Fear Of Missing Out, as in: “why should I give up the hard work when nobody doesn’t? Everybody will be happier and more accomplished in the end”. According to the World Journal of Clinical Cases, this condition:
“Fear of missing out (FoMO) is a unique term introduced in 2004 to describe a phenomenon observed on social networking sites. FoMO includes two processes; firstly, perception of missing out, followed up with a compulsive behavior to maintain these social connections.”
It became particularly trendy in relation to our growing incapacity of getting away from social media; as informations flows like an ocean-wide stream and everything is important to know but at the same time not enough important to last in our brain for more than 8 second, we have started experiencing the fright of never knowing enough of the world, while others around us might do, because they might have read that extra article of The Economist during lunch break.
If FoMO is keeping you at steak like it is doing with me, you might also be experiencing a general sense of inadequacy or the impostor syndrome. Or all three combined together, why not. If you do, then it might be time to stop for a second, take a step aside from your daily hustle and think of yourself and repeat after me “Happiness is a social construct”.
“Wait a second: are you saying that we’re not supposed to be happy?”. Nope, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that the concept “happiness” as the mainstream discourse means it, is a huge, tremendously nocive construct. And It is not even me that says it, it’s literature.
“Happiness is a social construct: an abstract state of satisfaction made by modern society for us to buy things and services [...]. How am I supposed to be happy if I don’t have the means for purchasing happiness?”
Happiness is therefore being juxtaposed with the concept of success, and success is supposedly an ever-growing state of achievement and self-improvement. But the problem is—like William Baryło puts it in his article for Medium—that in Nature there is no such thing as everlasting groth. Apples don’t grow forever, they rot, fall, leave seeds on the ground, and get eaten by bugs. Same thing for all those little bits of living and nonliving things that make the world. Also mountains don’t stand high and unreachable forever, they actually crumble down year by year—believe me, I was born in the Dolomites—. So, if even rocks have a life cycle, why would you force yourself into a straight line of ever-growth?
The Internet is full of suggestions on how you should or should not find your balance, but Blogwig’s goal is not to suggest you the best Mindfulness app, the magic yoga practice of the year or the greatest therapist in town. In Ludwig, we deal with words. Words are very, very, very important. Not only when talking or texting to others, they are most important when talking to ourselves.
I am pretty sure that if, instead of asking ourselves “are you happy?”, we asked ourselves “are you serene?”, then our life choices would be much different. If, instead of pursuing the unreachable state of perpetuous joyful excitement, we focused on reaching “the state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled” —that’s the definition of serenity by the way—I think we would stop aiming at doing more, instead, we would start doing better.
If we started switching from the happiness narrative to the serenity one, if we started all using the right words in front of our mirror, will we finally forget about happiness, and be finally happy?
Maybe it’s worth a shot.
