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Be aware of your competing desires
Saturday, 14 April 2007
Theodore Dalrymple is an interesting writer who often has keen insights into the emotional turbulence within us all. He's a doctor and psychiatrist who spent many years practising in a hospital and a prison in a deprived area of England. As he had to deal so much with those at the bottom of life's heap, he witnessed many of the tragedies that face us all at their most raw.
One of his most profound insights is that we all have inside us competing and contradictory desires. On the one hand we have a deep need for danger and excitement, while on the other we also want safety and security. These are obviously incompatible, but many of us want both in our lives at the same time. This is clearly impossible and the reason for many of life's frustrations and disappointments.
Of course, different people tip themselves different ways on this scale between danger and safety. Even the same people may change in their need for each throughout life. Young men often desire a high degree of danger and excitement, for example.
It seems to be when someone has too much of one that they start chasing the other. That's why people sometimes throw away what's a clearly good situation for them - a sound relationship, a steady job - and pursue what can appear to be crazy alternatives. Their need for danger hasn't been satisfied, and has heated up so much inside them that it's boiled over.
Dalrymple believes one of the sicknesses of modern culture is the need to fend off boredom. We live in such a safe and easy little world, with everything provided for us, that we crave excitement. This need can be fed by creating deliberate crises in our lives. Perhaps we will date someone obviously inappropriate, or take up drugs, or drive too fast. If our safety net was taken away from us, we'd be terrified, but at least we'd feel something.
I think there's a lot of sense in this analysis of modern people. When you find yourself in difficult situations, ask yourself: "Is this of my own making?"
Are you, for example, ruining your relationships for the sake of a little thrill? Are you abusing your health to court the dark side of life?
Understanding this need for danger in our lives and the alleviation of boredom can help to explain behaviour within us that otherwise appears inexplicable. Perhaps, deep down you are manufacturing crises and difficulties for yourself, because that creates meaning in a life where otherwise there would be none.
Take a deep look into your circumstances and behaviour to see if this is the case for you. If so, try to find meaning in creative pursuits rather than the raw thrill of destruction.
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