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“How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness,” wrote William James “is in
fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they
are willing to endure.” (William James)
While this drive for happiness is for many in the modern day somewhat of an
obsession, few have much success. Instead it is common to spend one’s life in
states of despondency, either troubled by minor worries, or mired in deeper
suffering and despair.
William Hazlitt observed that this feeling that we should be happy, together with
our failure to be so, renders us unique amongst all animals.
“Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is
struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.”
(William Hazlitt)
This modern view of happiness is somewhat unique. The ancient Greek tragedians, for
example, held suffering to be all-pervasive and inescapable – not within our power
to overcome. “No man is happy”, according to the messenger in Euripides’s Medea.
The Chorus in the Philoctetes of Sophocles echoes the same bleak judgment regarding
the nature of man:
“Of mortal man doomed to an endless round
Of sorrow, and immeasurable woe!”
While the standards of living have greatly improved in the Western world,
eradicating much of the suffering caused by poverty, sickness, and high mortality
rates which afflicted the ancient world, the fact is the modern individual remains
in a position similar to Tantalus. Even in the midst of external comforts,
suffering remains, and happiness, far too often, appears unreachable.
In his profound book, Swamplands of the Soul, the psychologist James Hollis
reverberates the wisdom of the ancient tragedians, arguing that we would be prudent
to realize that despite our best efforts to escape the troubles which burden us, we
will forever remain unable to eradicate once and for all the “swamplands of the
soul” which weigh us down:
“We may also think”, wrote Hollis, “that if we undertake a sincere and disciplined
analysis we will find the high ground and be able to build our castle there.
Instead, we find to our dismay that we fall back into the old places, the familiar
swamplands we have always known despite our heroic efforts. The great rhythms of
nature, of time and tide, of fate and destiny, and of our own psyche, move their
powerful ways quite outside our will.” (James Hollis, Swamplands of the Soul)
The attainment of happiness, Hollis asserts, is not in our control to the extent we
have been led to believe. For this reason, Hollis suggests that the ultimate aim of
life should not be the realization of happiness, but the cultivation of meaning.
And furthermore, he maintains that it is within the swamplands of suffering which
we fall back into time and time again, that we can discover and forge meaning.
In the words of Hollis:
“…there is no sunlit meadow, no restful bower of easy sleep; there are rather
swamplands of the soul where nature, our nature, intends that we live a good part
of the journey, and from whence many of the most meaningful moments of our lives
will derive. It is in the swamplands where soul is fashioned and forged, where we
encounter not only the gravitas of life, but its purpose, its dignity and its
deepest meaning.” (James Hollis)
Cultivating the capacity to forge meaning from the many swampland states which
litter our path in life, requires a reorientation of attitude towards suffering. It
is common, when faced with any form of pain or discomfort, to reflexively flee from
it – either through various forms of distractions, addictions, or obsessions.
Instead of fleeing from pain and discomfort, Hollis maintains we must learn how to
embrace it, and understand the truth that within each swampland state is a
developmental task awaiting us, and a reservoir of deep insights which, if
realized, can aid our psychological growth and maturation.
“In each of these swampland states there is a developmental task…we have to ask
what task is implicit in each of these dismal places. In every case it is some
variant of gaining permission, leaving a dependency or finding the courage to stand
vulnerably and responsibly before the universe. In every case we are challenged to
grow up, to take on the journey with greater consciousness. While such enlargement
is often terrifying, it is also freeing and brings dignity and meaning to our
lives.” (James Hollis)
Mastering the art of discovering and accepting the task and truths embedded in our
suffering will not liberate us from suffering once and for all. Rather, it will
grant us the ability to continually transcend our states of suffering.
“We must be still”, wrote TS Eliot in the Four Quartets, “and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation.”
While moving into a further union and deeper communion with ever vaster swampland
states may not make us happier, it will stimulate personal growth and self-
transformation.
Nietzsche observed that when despair becomes unbearable there often arises a voice
spontaneously from the unknown depths of our being which cries out “Become new!” –
initiating a rebirth into a greater state of being. And as Goethe noted, without
such experiences of suffering, we can never be truly human:
“And until you have experienced this: Die and become!
you are but a ghost-like visitor on the dark earth.”
(Goethe, Selige Sehnsucht)
To reorient our worldview in this way, thus striving for meaning and self-
transformation instead of happiness, Hollis offers the following advice:
“The task implicit in the encounter with despair is to sustain the struggle, to
move from being victim to being hero, from the pathetic to the tragic…the task
implicit in despair is not to deny the terrible feelings, nor to relinquish the
modest dignity of our humanity, but to suffer through toward whatever awaits beyond
the tautologies of despair.” (James Hollis)
Often in the midst of suffering there is no way to know the task implicit in it, no
means to discover before hand what awaits us beyond it – how our struggle will
transform and affect us. It is in these moments that we must cultivate the trust
that there is some greater force working within and through us, and that, so long
as we heroically embrace our suffering, we will be aiding the process whereby we
forge meaning and become fully human. As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke advised:
“We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors,
they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at
hand, we must try to love them. And if we could only arrange our life according to
that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then
that which now seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find
most faithful.
So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you
have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud shadows, passes over your
hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you,
that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you
fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any
depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing
inside you.” (Rainer Maria Rilke)
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