Which came first the chicken or the egg? A similar question haunts happiness and positivity researchers.
Consider a few facts:
A lot of scary, awful sh*t goes down in our minivan. There’s yelling, there’s arguing, there are sippy cups being thrown and oh, the complaining. It’s too hot, too cold, we’re never going to get there, my seat belt’s too tight, the van smells bad… the list goes on and on.
In regards to the van smelling bad (yeah, I’d like to complain about that, too), I’m not sure what in the world the kids do in there, but they’re gross and they make my van stink.
However, every now and then, the girls have actual conversations while we’re cruising down the road, my favorite among them being “What are you going to be when you grow up?”
These conversations are so filled with hope and promise my heart nearly bursts. They are going to be dancers and singers and doctors and teachers and fashion designers. There is nothing out of reach. Nothing they can’t do. Everything is possible. These are the conversations I try to burn into my memory so when I’m old, feeble and sitting alone in my nursing home, I’ll be able to recall their tiny voices — their tiny voices and big dreams.
Was there ever a time that I felt like this? A time where I felt I could do anything? If such a time existed, I can’t remember having it, nor can I remember losing it, yet I miss having it; that feeling that I could be anything, do anything.
Long gone are the days of my childhood dream where I thought I could be an Olympic gymnast. That dream was crushed by my inability to throw my ass over my head in any sort of graceful way.
However, the girls’ childhood dreams are alive and well, and on any given day, they can be anything.
Yesterday, however, Cameron grew anxious about her chosen profession as a fashion designer.
“What if I change my mind?” she said. “I wrote I was going to be a fashion designer on my paper at school, but is it OK if I change it later?”
What will you discuss with your children this evening? Sports, the weather, celebrity gossip, rape?
We are from three generations (81, 50, and 36 years old), three faiths (Christian, Muslim, Jewish), and three continents (Africa, Asia, North America). One of us is a religious leader, one a writer and rape survivor, and one the CEO of a non-profit organization. We come together in the wake of the recent upheaval around rape in India, South Africa, the U.S. and the UK, because we share a passionate conviction: we must bring the discourse home to the next generation on every continent.
Why did the men in the recent India and South Africa crimes rape, torture, and murder their victims? How could Jimmy Savile of the BBC molest hundreds of people and still die a hero? Why did the gang rapists in Ohio feel safe boasting on camera about what they had done? Why do too many Indians dehumanize women, and too many South Africans believe that men are just intrinsically badly behaved and programmed to rape? Who do we think these sub-human women and out-of-control men are?
They are us and, if we are not careful, they will be our children. We do not have the answers, but we should all be asking the questions, and we should include our sons, daughters and all the young people in our lives in our discussions. We need to stop behaving as if it’s all a terrible problem out there, and start talking about it with each other and with our children.
So much ink has been spilt in the media over the last few weeks. Rape has become a ubiquitous global topic, and that is encouraging since it is a global blot on our collective humanity. But hardly anyone has paid attention to how this affects the most important group of all: the next generation, which is poised to inherit our poisonous baggage.
The fact is, rape is utterly commonplace in all our cultures. It is part of the fabric of everyday life, yet we all act as if it’s something shocking and extraordinary whenever it hits the headlines. We remain silent, and so we condone it. The three of us deal with this issue in different ways every day of our lives, yet we too are guilty of protesting articulately outside but leaving it on the other side of the door when we sit down to dinner with our families. Until rape, and the structures — sexism, inequality, tradition — that make it possible, are part of our dinner table conversation with the next generation, it will continue. Is it polite and comfortable to talk about it? No. Must we anyway? Yes.
It seems daunting. But which is more painful: talking sensibly with young people about this issue, the same way we might talk with them about drugs, guns, or bullying, or waiting for something terrible to happen so close to home that you have to address it in a time of turmoil?
Children can seem fragile, and adults often have the mistaken notion that telling children about harsh realities will destroy their innocence. But you do not lose innocence when you learn about terrible acts; you lose your innocence when you commit them. An open culture of tolerance, honesty, and discussion is the best way to safeguard innocence, not destroy it.
Changing rape culture is family work, but it cannot be only family work. It is a public health issue of gravest concern. The statistics are everywhere, but the evidence is weirdly shadowy: like the one in four girls abused in South Africa, by the one in four men who admit to having raped someone. (But who are these girls, and where are these men? Hardly anyone is talking.) The cost in human suffering, lives decimated, families destroyed, mental anguish, physical trauma…the cost of rape is probably bigger than any of us can comprehend. Rape is expensive. Not just families from China to Canada, but all the important institutions in young people’s lives everywhere — schools from Finland to the Philippines, youth programs from London to Laos –should spend less energy ignoring the issue and more energy helping children understand the basic concepts of respect and choice.
Yes, governments must step up. But so should we all. Why shouldn’t rape be dinner table conversation? We talk about war, we talk about death, we discuss values with our children. But on the subject of sexual assault, we remain silent and squeamish. We leave them ill-prepared, with whispers of untold horrors and no guidance for our sons on how they should behave if one day they should find themselves in a group of boys with a girl in their power.
Rape does not exist in a vacuum, and we cannot talk about it as if it is removed from the rest of our lives. Let’s teach our children that they don’t need to live in little boxes defined by their gender or culture. Let’s teach them that they are all of equal worth. Let’s not favor our boys over our girls. Let’s not tolerate bullying or stereotyping. Let’s reject utterly the notion that boys will be boys and girls must work around this assumption or pay the price.
Yes, policies should change, laws should be just. But if we want to make a fundamental difference, all of us must bring the conversation home. It is our opportunity to start to create true change. It might not be polite and comfortable, but it is essential. We owe it to our children.
I assured her that she could change her mind. I told her that people evolve and their interests change and she could grow and change with them. I told her that I, myself, was still deciding what I wanted to “be” when I grew up. This blew her little mind.
“But Mommy, you’re already sooooo old,” she said.
Concerned about my career path, or lack thereof, Hadley offered a suggestion.
“Mom,” she said. “I think you should be a waitress. Yes, a waitress. That would be a fun job.”
Cameron said, “Oh Hadley. That is not a good job for Mommy. Mommy could not EVER handle that job.”
Well, sh*t. I get it — being a waitress is damn hard, but she’s clearly missed the part of her life where I’ve waited on her nonstop for six years. Either that, or she really doesn’t think I’m very good at it.
So, I’m left wondering: What will I “be”? What is my dream?
Is it possible I’m living it? I might be. Driving the smelly minivan down the road, listening to the girls dream out loud — yes, this could be it. It’s quite possible I’ve arrived at everything I’ve ever dreamed of and it smells like baby poop and has automatic sliding doors. Yet, dream big, girls. Mommy is counting on a super sweet nursing home.
- Happy people live longer, and are healthier. From cold, to flu to heart disease, correlational and at times experimental data has shown that happier people are less susceptible to these diseases and have a healthier overall immune system.
- Conversely it has also been found that those having good health (indexed by say more heart rate variability associated with the vagus nerve) experience greater positive emotions and are good at regulating emotions and increasing and self-generating positive emotions.
- Happy people help others more, are more compassionate, altruistic, are more socially engaged and inclusive and in general have better social relationships.
- Social support or perceived social connectivity is an important predictor of health; and loneliness or perceived social dis-connectivity is a stronger risk factor for heart disease etc, than the combined risk from smoking, not exercising, sedentary lifestyle etc. Thus perceived social relationship seem to ensure good health.
- It can also be argued that warmer social relationships are a cause of daily happiness; it’s hard to see how you can sustainably feel positive emotions if your relationships with say your spouse or boss are not good.
- Vagus nerve is part of para-sympathetic nervous system (PSNS) that relaxes and rejuvenates us. Greater heart rate variability (HRV) is good for us and our hearts and we can increase HRV by interventions that increase positive emotions. More activation of PSNS helps us relax and puts us in a relaxed and unguarded frame of mind where we can open to others and build close and trusting relationships.
So what comes first? Good health, good relationships or positive emotions? They actually have reciprocal relationships with good prior health (say indexed by greater HRV) enabling one to experience more positive emotions and benefit more form interventions designed to increase positive emotions. Positive emotions in turn lead to actual psychical changes in HRV, increasing it and thus decreasing our risk of heart disease and increasing overall health. This, thus becomes an upward dynamic spiral with one feeding into other. What about the role of (perceived) social connections?
A new study [pdf] by Barbara Fredrickson and team, using an experimental procedure, showed that perceived social connections mediate the effect of positive emotions on health. What this means is that the causal chain linking positive emotions to health has a hop in between labelled ‘perceived’ social connections. In simpler words, if you became happier, your health would be affected positively, t o the extent that those positive emotions lead to greater perceived social connectivity. In even simpler words, the path from happiness to longer and healthier life passes through the forest of increased social connectivity.
The study Barbara and team did was to enrol about 60+ participants for a Loving-kindness meditation intervention, while a control group was kept on a waiting list. The Loving-kindness meditation is an ancient Buddhist/ Tibetan practise that encourages one to widen ones sphere of compassion and generate positive emotions and thoughts towards self and others. They kept daily scores of positive and negative emotions faced by study participants and correlated this with their daily meditative practises. They also kept a daily record of how connected the participants felt in their crucial social interactions. Also prior to, and after the study (lasting ~ 60 days) they gave the participants a test to measure the vagal tone or HRV.
What they found proved their hypothesis that increase in positive emotions lead to increase in positive health and that this is mediated by increase in perceived social connectivity. Reducing negative emotions on the other hand had little to no effect on HRV. It is instructive to pause here and reiterate that positive emotions and negative emotions are separate constructs and not just opposites on a continuum. You need to work to increase positive emotions and a reduction in negative emotions does not automatically guarantee that positive emotions will increase. Also, while negative emotions typically activate sympathetic nervous system, while positive emotions activate the para sympathetic branch. The PSNS helps us relax, broaden-and-build our social capital and thus leads to greater social connectivity and thus greater health. It also helps us better regulate our emotions.
This finally brings me to the fact that many heart patients find a new lease of life after attending Baba Ramadev Yoga shivir or Brahma Kumari’s residential camp in Mount Abu and are radically transformed for the better. While yoga practises or meditative and other dietary practises may have some effect in such turnarounds, I suspect the major effect is form the increased positive emotions that such camps produce and especially the immediate sense of social connectivity that one feel being part of such a group. Given the scientific facts that increasing positive emotions through meditative or other practices and providing a sense of social connectivity and support structure, these programs are bound to succeed and alleviate the health problems especially in the cardiovascular areas, which our population suffers from.
While some people may be (rightly) sceptical of the political motivations of the Baba or the religious beliefs of the Brahma Kumari’s , at least they can be assured that the camps for heart patients etc that these organisations conduct are build around solid scientific theory and are bound to deliver results. Of course you can increase positive emotions in your home too, by practising Loving Kindness Mediation or some other form of happiness increasing interventions (like keeping a gratitude journal) , and that would work too.
So the right sequence is be happy, connect more and live long and healthy! And then the sequence will turn into an upward spiral pushing you further and further up the path of health and happiness.
