we’re bone-heavy creatures…keep close
I wrote yesterday in Sunday Life about going retro with my work habits…that I write out things longhand and that I’ve taken to using index cards to map out ideas before sitting down to a computer screen. It gets me closer to my creativity and slows things down to the pace at which I create and think.
By Neil Stewart
So happens I was reading David Malouf’s essay The Happy Life in The Quarterly Essay yesterday. He writes longhand, too. Then types. And he discusses – beautifully - the idea that part of our unease, our contemporary unhappiness, comes from having so much our life occurring at a speed that our bodies are not aligned with.
He writes that it is integral to our happiness to be curious and to delve and to investigate. And that our bodies are our reference point, to determine direction.
“We start always from the body, and relate all thing back to it.”
And indeed everything about our bodies are in relation – think of Vitruvian Man (Da Vinci’s figure that shows every bit of our body is proportional and symmetrical.)
But life goes so fast now.
“These days we can travel around the globe at hundreds of kilometres an hour and project ourselves into space at several times that speed; but in some part of ourselves we are still bone-heavy creatures tied to the gravitational pull of the Earth, lumbering along as our great-grandfathers did…at four hundred paces, and tiring.”
Yes, and tiring.
The question, he writes, is:
“whether emotionally, psychologically, we can feel at home in a world whose dimensions so largely exceed …what our bodies can keep in view.”
He suggests we can’t. He suggests we’re happy within limits. When things are brought in small and view-able. Think of a man in jail who finds happiness in the routine, or in the way the sun rises each morning. We hear these stories. Victor Frankl springs to mind for me. We are capable of being happy in the most dire of circumstances – think of smiling Africans living in squalor – if things are brought in close, to “human dimensions”.
I like this theory. It intuitively makes sense. It explains things like, “it’s the simple things…” and staycations. And why we’re all finding it harder to be happy – in the still, calm, contented sense – amidst all the frenetic action out there.
It’s consequences are this:
* It might be good to create limits to how big your life gets – limit the depth of the rabbit hole you descend down when on the internet, narrow your reading choices online.
* And to bring things in closer and slower – write longhand, make bread from scratch, handwrite a letter.
* And move a little less – enjoy the things in your immediate vicinity…the routine, the way the sun rises each morning. To pretend you’re in jail.
What do you reckon? Can we get closer to our own, subjective happy spot by honoring our bone-heaviness?
I struggle daily with this. I know it intuitively to be true, and have forced often much resented guidelines with my children about cell phones, computer, gaming, tv, etc. because of my mindset that eventually these things lead to a certain emotional kind of burnout. It’s really hard to discipline oneself when temptation is constantly at fingertip, and not a ‘bad’ thing, and so gratifying in the shorthand. Our oldest who is sixteen blames me for making him depressed and angry in sixth through eighth grades because of my rules. He wasn’t allowed to have Myspace, a computer in his room, a cell phone until eighth grade, and not allowed to play M games, like ALL his friends. Thanks for this post…I want to write one on the same topic now! I’ve been reading you for a while and really like your writing and constant streamlining of your life.
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Love your blog and love David Malouf, although this time I have to respectfully disagree with some of the points, especially about ‘narrowing your reading online’. While I can appreciate the biological reasons for simplicity, I think one of the most beautiful things about the human brain is that it is not limited by time, space–or even bones. And I think we should celebrate its ability by exploring it.
Our brains and our imaginations have the ability to access spaces and abstract ideas and histories and that which is intangible. I think this is an important part of what makes us human; that while our bodies may be limited and bone-heavy, our minds and hearts are not. I think evolution happens when people allow their brains to defy the limitations of their bones, not be limited by them.
I do, however, believe that there is real, raw, meaningful happiness to be found in simplicity, especially in relation to eating locally and sustainably, and creating solid roots close to ‘home’. I think the most brilliant aspect of being alive, however, is that those roots don’t have to be physical, or even particular to your immediate space. I think what weighs us down–in a good way– is our passions and our purposes. They give us gravity. They allow us to speak from a place of strength. It’s finding those things (which, ironically, we often feel ‘in our bones’) and honouring their weight in our actions that allows us to find peace.
As always, a beautifully-written and thought-provoking piece!
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May 23rd, 2011 at 11:37 am
Bek, your points are sound. Interestingly David says our brains can cope with the speed and volume, but our emotions can’t.
But I take your point about our evolution being defined by the push from our brains. I totally agree. It’s the “divine discontent” that drives us on. Which suggests progress isn’t always about happiness…
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Put so eloquently.
I write..in the bathroom is a good place for me, while putting on my make up and no one else is around.
I got lost…blogged and got consumed by the delights around me. My nature is to flit to the next thing thats shiny and bright but only last week wrote a email to Rachel Meeks from http://www.smallnotebook.org about the state of my blog or the state of my mind..conclusion..narrow down and focus on what you want to say. Rachel doesn’t have facebook or twitter. She writes when it suits her without the distractions of the social media world.
The days before blogger..I wrote anything I wanted, read books to the end and more importantly…enjoyed time with my family.
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May 23rd, 2011 at 4:48 pm
Thanks for the smallnotebook link! checking it out now. x
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A low information diet is one of the greatest presents you can give yourself in this era of hyperstimulation.
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…limit the depth of the rabbit hole you descend down when on the internet, narrow your reading choices online.
Wise words worth considering. I’m keeping your site firmly within my narrowing choices.
thx
Mick
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May 23rd, 2011 at 4:49 pm
oh good! sometimes I cut off my nose to spite my face!
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Great article. Always a balancing act with these things in life.
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I definitely agree with limiting the flow of information. We live in a world that is safer from human threats, wars and natural disasters than ever before, yet we would never know it to watch the news. The big difference between now and 100 years ago is we never would have known about the majority of the stuff that hits our screens daily. Not necessarily saying they were happier than but they certainly had a lot less crap to contend with.
Dont watch the news. It rots your brain and is usually at least partially fiction anyway.
I agree with everything you said… but I am not bone heavy. I am light as a feather. I am a bird. The only constant is change after all, and wherever I go in life, I will be there. Then move on unattached when the wind takes me elsewhere. To fight life’s changes is to always be fighting yourself. I wish to be adaptable, and be wholly in the moment wherever I am. The idea that we own anything, or belong to any one place, is an illusion anyway.
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May 23rd, 2011 at 4:50 pm
Cute, as always Mia!
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I totally agree with this concept. I am studying nursing which is full of abbreviations and I find that when i write things out fully, on paper it just makes more sense, i retain more. This is the same with lecture notes, i tried to type them as it went but i find it much easier to connect with the content by writing notes on my lecture notes, circling things and drawing diagrams. I really does seem that with technology we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves at times.
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[...] This one is so very true, limit what you bring into your world for your own happiness…We’re bone heavy creatures. [...]
For me personally I have found that I have given up writting things longhand. I am in my second year of a Bachelor of Applied Social Science in counselling and when I first started uni I wrote all my essays in longhand and then on the pc. Now I only use the pc for writting essays and the plans and referencing for them. I find this simplifies the process for me and I can also find more focus in the neatness of the process when not written in longhand. I also use a notebook to write notes in lectures because I can highlight statements in colour so they stand out for me when I refer back during essay writting. For me the pc makes this process easy and now my brain has caught up with this way of studying it works best for me, although I have found the more I use the pc and internet for study the more I love reading books for entertainment and doing hands on creative art.
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[...] a recent post on her blog, Sarah Wilson discussed an essay by David Malouf entitled ‘The Happy Life’, which appeared in the Quarterly [...]
[...] not sure if this resonates. It it does… You can read here about how to bring life in closer to the core, instead of flinging out into the ever-expanding [...]
Oh Sarah I snorted with laughter at this one. I hope this was supposed to be ironic. Yes, let’s pretend we are in squalid jail cells in Africa. Life is so darn complicated- those African kids really don’t know how good they have it.
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I love following your blog and don’t have time to follow many. This one resonated with me. It’s your type a personality! I’m always doing a million things at once, 2 jobs and teaching yoga and selling my art, with 2 kids and a husband and continually taking on tasks like soaking my own nuts and making as many things as I can by hand! But yet I feel my life is in complete balance! I think it’s having some creative time and time to exercise every day that helps create my balance in life. Some people are read/write learners so the process of writing helps them learn more efficiently. You can google VARK and work out How you learn best, I’m a mix, read/write& visual and auditory so the drawing , writing and reading out loud helps me remember things.
I’m not really looking forward to the challenge of technology that will face me when my kids get older, but if you have consistency in your family it will help.
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