Monday, January 31, 2011

In and out of control

The other day, while watching an episode of "Monk" (an obsessive-compulsive detective), I started thinking about how important control is to us all. Monk (and presumably, many obsessive compulsive people) tries to compensate for the gap between what he would like to control (just about everything) and what he actually controls (very little) by imposing control where-ever possible, in the form of useless but comforting routines (touching all the lampposts along his way, etc. ). Obviously, he is very aware of the gap, and he does not really accept the fact that very little can be done about it.

The three most important elements in the above description are the size of the gap (which depends more on our own expectations and assumptions than anything else), our awareness of it (some people hardly seem to think about it, while for others, it is crucial), and our acceptance of it.

As far as the real (as opposed to the perceived) size of the gap is concerned, we can only control a very little bit: we grow up to learn a certain degree muscle control, and we try to control our own emotions and our own thoughts, but most of us are only partially successful at that. Of the outside world, we can perhaps control small physical objects, and we can exert an influence over the thoughts and feelings of others in our direct environment (friends, family members, colleagues), but very few of us are in a position to influence (much less control) larger groups of people, except perhaps in certain situations (and then usually for only a short period of time). Example: you can make huge numbers of people think of a lemon just by appearing on the t.v. for a few seconds, and telling them not to think of a lemon. Personally, I would never throw good money away on something like this, but who knows, maybe this is some control freak's idea of a fun thing to do.

Knowing what is realistic is a big step towards accepting the gap. Notwithstanding - or perhaps thanks to - many infantile attempts to fly (including some of my own, which mercifully ended without major accident), most adults find it relatively easy to accept that humans cannot fly on their own, without help from a machine or contraption. In fact, a large part of growing up consists of exactly that: learning about your own limitations and in some cases finding ways to get around them.

And they say t.v. teaches us nothing!
Now if only it would teach me to accept my own limitations ...

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Oh, for laughing out loud!


There are a lot of popular ideas that some people might say are truisms, but  I just don’t get. (Of course, you could be excused for thinking that this is somehow my fault, that I am just more simple-minded than most people, but that is besides the point. ..)

One such idee fixe is that laughter is a defense mechanism. I grew up hearing this. With some things, it you hear them often enough, you start believing them. But with this one, I had my doubts, even from very early on (when I was nine or ten). I suppose I may have been influenced by the fact that I already knew that a smile makes a lousy umbrella. In any case, I got a bit obsessed with the whole idea, so I was very happy to discover that my brother had a character flaw which made it possible to put the theory to the test. What he would do, on a relatively regular basis, was insult or otherwise bother some bigger kid, wait until he was mad enough to threaten with bodily harm, then start laughing. This allowed me to gather proof – from a safe distance - that nine times out of ten, laughter offers absolutely no protection against fists.

Another is the idea that laughter is the best medicine. To me, it is more like a sickness. Not only is it contagious (something that sit-com producers abuse shameless by sticking a laugh-track under just about anything), it can be really dangerous. If laughter really were a medicine, the list of counterindications would read something like “do not use in case of cracked lips, broken ribs, ruptured spleen or appendix, collapsed lung “ … the list is almost endless! And it can even be dangerous is a different way, namely when you laugh at inappropriate moments, like I demonstrated above. Some more examples of moments when it might be risky to laugh: while receiving a serious reprimand from your boss, at the most tragic or romantic point in a movie (don’t laugh, I was once attacked by a bag-wielding old lady for committing this heinous offense), or when getting an accidental (and completely unwelcome) peek at your ex-wife’s new boyfriend’s private parts … personally, I also think it is inappropriate to laugh at accidents, but I know there is a whole branch of media industry that now depends on that sort of psuedo-comedy, so I guess very few people will agree with me on that.

Of course, we now know that laughter releases all kinds of feel—good chemicals like endorphins. So I’m thinking, why run all those risks, and do all that hard work (laughter actually requiries a lot of coordination, and involves a lot of different muscle groups) when you could just inject yourself with these chemicals. Or better yet, take them as pills. I suppose the most important risk there is addiction, but that doesn’t scare me much.

Which brings me to what I find most interesting about the above-mentioned idees fixes, namely that they both link laughter to fear, in a few short steps: defense – danger – fear, and medicine – sickness – fear.  Which is of course one really important aspect of laughter: how it (like whistling when it’s dark) helps us conquer fear. And conquering fear is all about emotional control.

I am not too good at this, but once in a while I do succeed in getting though otherwise potentially very distressing situations by imagining how I (or others) will laugh about it afterwards. This is so useful that I have made a resolve to develop this skill. 

More about this in a future post ...