The sadness of the "middle"

Our lives play out over three acts. Beware of Act #2!

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players … Life’s but a poor player who struts and frets (their) hour upon the stage …  — William Shakespeare

The dominant paradigm for human life and experience is the 3-act drama where Act I sets the scene (characters, location etc.), Act II creates some dynamic challenge and conflict for the protagonist(s), and Act III resolves that tension. At a very deep organic level, this dramatic structure captures an experience that most of us will deal with in our careers, our relationships and our lives as a whole. It is such a meaningful reflection of human experience that it underlies most successful novels, plays and movies as well as memoirs and narratives about real people and enterprises. It illuminates the passage from innocence through hard experience and “failure” to (hopefully) understanding/wisdom and success.

Joseph Campbell has identified this narrative arc in most cultures’ enduring myths and stories and called it the hero’s journey.* It consists of a protagonist moving out of the safe harbor of home into the world, encountering dangers and threats to their security and even survival, achieving a degree of wisdom and success, and returning home transformed by that experience (see Homer’s Odyssey and the first Star Wars trilogy as a template). When the story arc completes all three acts, we call it a drama. When the protagonist stalls out in Act II, we call it a tragedy. So it is in life.

* [HERO is a gender-neutral term (she/he)]

In the Beginning …

At birth, we are equipped with wonderful instruments (senses, cognition, memory, innate reflexes and routines) for learning about our selves and the world into which we have been born. Much of the work of surviving, thriving and “growing up” consists of exploring the contours and mechanics of our selves and the world, and developing effective strategies for using our talents to achieve our goals/desires in the world as it is. This life-long process is referred to as adaptation.

In childhood and beyond, we have a great capacity to wish and dream. We form desires for the perfect meal, the perfect parent, the perfect friend, the perfect job, the perfect love, the perfect self. In Act I of every story and life, we go about seeking and finding and making those dreams real. When we succeed, we experience joy and life is good.

Life confronts us early and often with undeniable evidence of our inability to achieve all our dreams and wishes. We call this “failure”, which is shorthand for an experience in which we optimistically set out to achieve a goal (walking, making a friend, passing a test) and then receive dramatic evidence (falling, rejection, “F”) that our optimism was unfounded. You might expect that in the face of the multiple failure experiences with which the world so generously provides us, most 5 and 10 year olds let alone those in adolescence and adulthood would be depressed and hopeless and give up on achieving their dreams and goals. But they aren’t and they don’t. How do we manage to protect ourselves from the crushing realization (so well discussed by the existentialists) that we are small and weak and the universe is huge and impersonal and does not care about us? Why don’t we just give up early and often?

The best survival and success traits in the great game of life are optimism and persistence. Organisms that persist in trying to satisfy their needs and finding a way to overcome any obstacles in their way will surely thrive, survive and reproduce in greater numbers than their fellows who are more easily discouraged and prone to give up their crusade. As we humans are the product of thousands of generations of survival experiments and we’re still here despite all the threats encountered over the millennia, we probably have a good dose of that optimism/persistence dynamic encoded in our genes. It allows us to keep trying to reach our goals in the face of life’s inevitable failures and disappointments.

Act I: The adaptive value of hope, denial and positive illusions

The firing mechanism for starting up any new enterprise is a potent concoction of dreams, fantasies, wishes, hopes, wants and desires. Without that powerful rocket fuel, no one would launch a new venture or achieve escape velocity on the way to their ultimate destination. Voyages to new worlds would fizzle in the harbor and on the launch pad. If a species responded to adversity by giving up, it would die out quickly. So evolution by natural selection has equipped us with many wonderful survival mechanisms that generate desire and hope and protect us from falling into pessimism and despair.

At the start of a life, relationship, career or business, we know very little about the enterprise upon which we are embarking. Ignorance about how the world really works (the domain of science) is a perfect medium for the unobstructed growth of the fantasies and desires and hopes that provide the impetus for making a start at something. Wishes and desires bloom at the intersection of the unknowable and the unattainable. The period of innocence and hope that makes up most of Act I is an emotional Garden of Eden. It explains the passion and idealism of those early stages of life and love and work (as well as the yearning by many people in Act II of their own narrative to recapture the bliss of those halcyon days).

The world presents us with a great deal of experience and information that can challenge our belief that we can realize our fondest dreams and desires and hopes. As these failure experiences add up over time, you would imagine that most people would eventually fall into despair and hopelessness and give up on the pursuit of their goals and aspirations. While many do, the majority of people of all ages remain reasonably hopeful and optimistic and persist on their path toward something better.

Survey data indicates that in 2017, an estimated 11 million U.S. adults aged 18 or older had a major depressive episode severe enough to impair their ability to function. While this is a lot of suffering, that number represents just 4.5% of all U.S. adults, meaning that 95% were able to persist (albeit with some degree of normal unhappiness) in the face of life’s challenges. What protective mechanisms enable this significant majority of people to keep on keeping on in their lives, relationships, careers and other ventures?

Are we “smart”?

Daniel Kahneman and his colleague Amos Tversky devised hundreds of little experiments putting people in a variety of life-like situations (betting, competing, games etc.) and observing how they acted and most important how they thought about what they were doing. The main take-away from Kahneman’s research (summarized in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow) is that human beings are prone to a variety of mental quirks and “irrational” slips such as:

• Hot Hand Fallacy: the fallacious belief that a person who has experienced success has a greater chance of further success in additional attempts

• Hindsight Bias: Sometimes called the “I-knew-it-all-along” effect, the tendency to see past events as being predictable at the time those events happened

• Illusion of Control: The tendency to overestimate one’s degree of influence over other external events.

• Illusory Correlation: Inaccurately perceiving a relationship between two unrelated events

• Irrational Escalation: The phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was probably wrong. Also known as the sunk cost fallacy.

• Negativity Bias: Psychological phenomenon by which humans have a greater recall of unpleasant memories compared with positive memories

• Optimism Bias: The tendency to be over-optimistic, overestimating favorable and pleasing outcomes

• Social Desirability Bias: The tendency to over-report socially desirable characteristics or behaviors in one self and under-report socially undesirable characteristics or behaviors

• Semmelweiss Reflex: The tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts a preferred paradigm

After reading through a list of mental stumbles such as this, you might be tempted to conclude that human beings are pretty irrational, even dumb/stupid. You might decide that apparently our big brain doesn’t work so well after all. Not so fast! It all depends on how you view and understand the mind and its form, function, and development.

The human mind/brain evolved over thousands of years just like our musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, digestive and other systems. According to the patadigm of evolution, any body part or function that provides an organism with a competitive advantage that enables it to survive and procreate will be passed along genetically and therefore survive and expand into the next generation(s).

Yes, we’re “smart”!

If the primary purpose of the brain/mind (like every other body part) is SURVIVAL, then we need to evaluate the brain’s functioning within the context of that biological imperative. What we mean by the word smart should then no longer be confined to notions of rationality, logic or questions on an IQ test. So let’s look at how the following mental programs provide major adaptive/survival value by enabling us to maintain a belief in our knowledge/control and therefore our confidence and optimism so we can persist longer in trying to reach our goals:

• Hot Hand Fallacy: the belief that a person who has experienced success has a greater chance of further success in additional attempts reinforces optimism, efficacy/confidence and persistent pursuit of goals

• Hindsight Bias: the tendency to see past events as being predictable at the time those events happened reinforces belief in an orderly predictable universe and supports optimism, efficacy/confidence and persistent pursuit of goals

• Illusion of Control: The tendency to overestimate one’s degree of influence over external events reinforces optimism, efficacy/confidence and persistent pursuit of goals

• Illusory Correlation: Inaccurately perceiving a relationship between two unrelated events reinforces a belief in a coherent predictable universe and prevents confusion and helplessness

• Irrational Escalation: The phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was probably wrong, reinforces optimism, efficacy/confidence and persistent pursuit of goals

• Negativity Bias: Psychological phenomenon by which humans have a greater recall of unpleasant memories compared with positive memories reinforces fear and caution/avoidance of danger and increases odds of survival

• Optimism Bias: The tendency to be over-optimistic, overestimating favorable and pleasing outcomes reinforces efficacy/confidence and persistent pursuit of goals and protects against despair/hopelessness

• Social Desirability Bias: The tendency to over-report socially desirable characteristics or behaviors in one self and under-report socially undesirable characteristics or behaviors reinforces self-confidence, optimism, efficacy and persistent pursuit of goals

• Semmelweiss Reflex: The tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts a preferred paradigm reinforces a belief in one’s ideas and a coherent predictable universe, and prevents confusion and helplessness

The adaptive purpose of these mental processes is to deny the harsh reality that we cannot predict or control much of what happens to us in our lives. These positive illusions enable us to maintain hope and optimism, refuse to take “No” for an answer when the world smacks us down, and keep trying to reach our goals which increases the probability of attaining them and surviving and procreating.

Act II: Dis-Illusion-Ment and the Sadness of the Middle

Act I is the story of happy dreams (the perfect job, partner, life, self) and the successful denial of threats and obstacles to achieving those dreams. Denial is the mental equivalent of closing your eyes during a scary scene in a movie. It is the brain saying “This isn’t happening” in the face of a situation that, if fully contemplated, could trigger a level of helplessness and hopelessness that would shut down any active attempts to cope. Ignorance is indeed bliss (for a while).

Act II of the human drama begins when the hard lessons of experience (i.e. repeated failure to achieve cherished goals) begin to break through our self-protective defenses and illusions of control and understanding. When the data of experience undermines our belief in our ability to predict and control events, there is a second line of defense that keeps us from falling into helplessness and existential despair.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross studied how people react to a life-threatening illness and other trauma. She observed that many patients cycled through a series of mental and emotional reactions (though not always or in a rigid sequence):

• Denial (This can’t be happening to me!)

• Protest (I’m angry that this is happening and I’m going to do something about it!)

• Bargaining (If you do X to protect/save me, I’ll do Y)

• Despair (It’s hopeless! I’m doomed!)

• Acceptance and Making Meaning (This happened. I can’t fight it or change it. I have to live with this reality. I will try to find some new perspective or meaning that gives me some comfort and a way to go on.)

When we lose the defense of denial in Act II of our personal drama, our first line survival strategy is largely about the emotion of anger. Anger is the power emotion, and it is triggered when we perceive that the world is not conforming to our wishes and hopes. It provides the energy and the impetus to take action to bring the world into alignment with those desires. There is a lot of storming and raging in the early phases of Act II as the protagonist puffs themselves up with threatening displays and attacks the enemies of their regime. If one is strong and aggressive enough, it is possible to beat down obstacles and adversaries and regain control. Winning a war triggers pride and joy, and those positive emotions reinforce our instinct to fight hard for victory. But what happens if all our angry fighting fails to create the desired outcome?

If we can’t simply dominate or destroy an enemy or other obstacle to achieving our goals, we may attempt to make a deal through negotiation and bargaining strategies. The action in Act II includes frequent and often desperate attempts to work out a negotiated settlement as a means to achieve at least a partial victory. Here, the protagonist is aware that they are not totally in control of the situation and that their success depends in part on the cooperation of another person. This loss of omnipotence is usually accompanied by an increase in fear and anxiety that forces us to shift gears and protects us from the dangers of too much angry fighting. This increases the odds of surviving and even winning.

Fighting and bargaining accounts for much of the action early in Act II. But what happens if the protagonist keeps failing in their efforts to either fight or negotiate their way toward their goals? As the evidence of our real helplessness keeps building up, we are more vulnerable to losing the belief in our efficacy and falling into a state of hopelessness.

Despair as dis-illusion-ment

When we lose all hope in our ability to achieve our goals by active measures, the emotion of despair kicks in. While we tend to view despair as a bad emotion, it actually serves an important survival function. It stops us from depleting all our energies in a losing campaign or from continuing to fight a superior enemy to the death. The hallmark symptoms of sadness and anergia (lack of energy) and hopelessness are like a strong brake or STOP sign that keeps us from driving over a cliff. Despair forces us to give up and take “No” for an answer.

The definition of a tragedy is when the protagonist falls into this state of despair in Act II and remains there until the stage lights go out and the curtain falls. They are never able to find an escape route from a tragic end and a way forward to the restoration of hope. Finding such a positive path ushers in the dramatic salvation of Act III.

Act III: Acceptance or a new plan

Kubler-Ross presents a pathway out of despair that she calls Acceptance. In the case of a terminal illness/diagnosis upon which she developed her stage theory of coping, there is in fact no active way to fight or bargain one’s way back to health. So the only remaining path to some emotional equilibrium is to accept that one’s life is ending and to perhaps find some peace and grace and meaning that softens the blow of that final exit.

People find various pathways through faith and nature and art and relationships that can lift them up out of their despair (though not their sadness and grief) even as they navigate their journey through the valley of death. But what can we do if we are facing not a death sentence but rather the death of hope of achieving a desired goal?

Acceptance and appreciation

Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful. — Buddha

Acceptance and appreciation is the best route to well-being if the data suggests that you have insufficient power/leverage to change your situation for the better. There are two schools of thought and practice that are particularly geared toward reducing suffering for people in situations where they may not have the personal power or resources to change a painful external reality: Stoicism and Buddhism. Employing best practices from these self-management systems can have a powerful beneficial impact.

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will. — Epictetus

Stoicism prescribes the practices of working exclusively within your sphere of control and radical acceptance of current conditions (things are exactly as they’re meant to be) coupled with an active refusal to give external conditions the power to control your emotions. It is one of the first so-called cognitive therapies that focus on how people think as a proximal cause of their emotional suffering and self-defeating behavior.

An effective stoical strategy for buffering the negative emotional impact of a world that refuses to comply with our desires and wishes is a form of appreciation called downward comparisons. An upward comparison takes the form of Things could be so much better (more love, money, fame, things) and tends to breed emotions of envy, anger and sadness. A downward comparison takes the form of Things could be so much WORSE and lists all the ways.

So if you’re not happy with a job but you can’t improve it or afford to leave it, a downward comparison would be “At least I have a paycheck so I’m not hungry and homeless”. Downward comparisons breed an acceptance and appreciation of current reality that tends to produce feelings of satisfaction and calm. It is an escape route from the pain and suffering of endlessly comparing Act II realities with the (unachieved) Act I ideal.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a person speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows them. If a person speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows them like a shadow that never leaves them.  — Buddha

The aim and purpose of Buddhist practice is the cultivation of specific desirable qualities and traits and attributes in the human mind and personality. The most important of these qualities that contribute most to general well-being even under trying circumstances are Mindfulness (full sensory awareness of the immediate present without judgment), Separateness (avoiding over-attachment to people, things and your own thoughts/emotions) and Kindness (compassion, empathy, caring).

The specific practices we think of as “meditation” (sitting, focusing on breathing, chanting etc.) are not the core of Buddhism. They are simply tools for the cultivation of these desirable qualities of mind that lead to less suffering and more joy in living, even when facing difficult and uncontrollable realities.

Getting back on the horse

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.  — George Bernard Shaw

If accepting and making the best of the situation is not to our liking, we can always redouble our efforts to develop new and effective strategies for improving the situation itself. That process can begin by stepping back and reviewing all the strategies already attempted that have failed to improve the situation in order to discover any self-defeating patterns such as

• failure to set a clear goal

• failure to make/execute a concrete plan

• failure to revise the plan when needed

• failure to obtain critical success resources (people, information, things)

• failure to persist long enough

• a tendency to work outside of our sphere of influence/control

• failure to listen to and effectively negotiate with others

• excessive displays of aggression or passivity

• lack of a success-critical skill

• reluctance to try something new/different

After listing all of our attempted strategies and related failure patterns, there is then an opportunity to look both within (to what you didn’t know you knew) and without (to other people and sources of information about what you didn't know you didn’t know) for novel ways to change a situation for the better. If one or more of those strategies succeeds, then you can enter your Act III to great applause!

First decide where you would be, and then proceed to go there. — Epictetus

If all attempts to accept or improve the situation do not result in measurable improvement despite diligent and sufficient effort, then the option of leaving the situation (job, relationship, place) for something better deserves consideration. Staying in an unhappy situation without either external or internal positive change is the textbook definition of tragedy as an endless Act II hell of pain and suffering.

In many cases, a change of circumstance will (at least partially) change our mood and experience. But if the costs of leaving a situation are judged as being too high (e.g. loss of economic resources, exposure to immediate threat/danger, unbearable loneliness), then a re-commitment to accepting or improving the situation is indicated.

Conclusion

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and perhaps the chief happiness which this world affords.  — Samuel Johnson

All the world’s a stage on which we live out the drama of our own lives. We begin our lives, as well as our relationships and careers, full of desires and dreams and hope and with something less than perfect knowledge of the world we are going to face (Act I).

When we are confronted with the data of experience indicating that failure is a real possibility, we tend to fall back on inherited coping mechanisms of thought and emotion and behavior that enable us to maintain our optimism and persistence in pursuing our goals. If those mechanisms break down under the accumulating evidence that our best efforts to achieve our goals are not working, we are at risk of becoming the tragic Act II figure who remains trapped in a deepening vortex of helplessness and despair.

Successful completion of the hero’s journey (and escape from the sadness of the middle) in Act III involves finding the strength and wisdom to transform the tragic situation and/or oneself, or migrate to a better world. One important secret discovered by Joseph Campbell in his study of the world’s mythic narratives (which he views as software written to help people manage their lives and its challenges) is that the hero-to-be rarely completes their journey alone. They usually manage to find and make use of a wise elder/master/sage figure who imparts new knowledge and also helps them find hope and confidence/courage within themselves.

Sometimes giving up the belief that heroes triumph alone is the first and most important step toward ending the sadness of the middle.

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