The test, for some, is too much to bear. Three days is enough: toxic aunts, addled uncles, screaming, newborn babies, exhausted toddlers, warring partners, drooping Christmas tree, cardboard turkey and a rising pile of receipts for presents to be returned. And then… the holiday is done. Relieved, it’s back to the clock-watching, performance-rated, workaholic (if employment is available) world that may not be all that pleasurable. But at least it’s not family.
For others of us, however, religious and non-religious alike, it’s a time of the year when, with luck, we might just enjoy a potentially revolutionary glimpse of a world that money can’t buy. One in which time is happily “wasted”; being “insanely busy” is considered a neurotic aberration and relatives and friends can be enjoyed at leisure, not put off with a promise that “we must get together… sometime”.
Hanging out in the family is what most children love but in our bizarre world of topsy-turvy values, when “free” time is our most precious commodity and income has to be earned and standards maintained, it’s often a heavily rationed treat – except on high days and holidays. And then, too often, the adult has lost the knack of idling or he or she finds the lack of momentum/direction/purpose just too painful to bear because in an uber market economy, where’s the return on time invested? Confucius said: “We all have two lives. The second one starts when we realise we only have one.” If only we listened to Confucius!
Instead, many of us live ridiculously fractured, stressed lives for most of the year because the mortgage or the impossibly high rent says we must – even when we know that it comes at the expense of what matters most in life. In a study on loneliness, neuroscientist John T Cacioppo and William Patrick quote a meta-analysis of the extensive literature on religion and health. They were seeking an answer to the question why regular churchgoers in the US live 25% longer than those who don’t attend church but have similar lives. Discounting divine intervention, the answer is that we are social animals and connections with others, and time to enjoy them, matter.
“As individuals,” Cacioppo and Patrick write, “we have everything to gain and everything to lose, in how well or how poorly we manage our need for human connection… connection adds more water to the well that nourishes our human potential.” Conversely, loneliness is so much more damaging than it initially appears and the wounds gape widest when it appears that the majority are enjoying the company of others.
Prolonged loneliness, according to Cacioppo and Patrick, can be as harmful to your health as smoking or obesity. Brain imaging, analysis of blood pressure, immune response and stress hormones demonstrate how loneliness impairs thinking, willpower and perseverance as well as the ability to exercise social skills. The isolated eventually become defensive and unconsciously construct for themselves the perfect Catch-22 – they behave in a way that puts others off. That might be worth remembering if an irascible relative is coming to stay.
In his book, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of the Markets, philosopher Michael J Sandel explains the phenomenon of “line standing”. In 2010, New York City Public theater put on its regular free performance of Shakespeare in Central Park, this time starring Al Pacino as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. People offered to stand in line for people who didn’t have the time but would pay for someone else to take the strain. So, “free” tickets eventually cost as much as $125 each. The market is inventive.
So inventive that a flourishing industry in happiness coaching now teaches us how to do what ought to come naturally – “spend” time; make friends, cement relationships. First aid will doubtless be offered this Christmas to families at serious risk of talking to each other and not being all that sure how to go about it, without burying nascent goodwill in a landslide of recriminations. We all know it shouldn’t be that way – so why does it happen?
Perhaps, for some, at the core of this unease is the issue of control. We control time in our normal working environment; we endeavour to control ourselves with acquaintances and strangers but on holiday when time stretches ahead (apart from cooking, cleaning, walking the dog, more cooking, cleaning, walking the dog), what we can’t do is control those whom we (technically and truly) love. More precisely, we can’t control the chemistry that occurs when two or more are gathered together, blood ties and social bonds holding firm, past grievances jostling with warm memories to see which will come to the fore first.
Of course, there are families where such tricky tiptoeing never applies. They are harmonious, jolly, enriched by each other’s presence – enthusiastically skyping Christmas wishes to relatives around the globe – mindful of the meaning of the festivities, lost in the enjoyment of the moment; a family in flow. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s 1990 book Flow, the classic work on achieving happiness, described what really makes us glad to be alive, based on years of research. “Flow,” Csikszentmihalyi wrote, is a state of joy, creativity and total involvement, in which problems disappear and there is an exhilarating feeling of transcendence.”
The way to happiness, as if we didn’t know, isn’t materialism, consumption, fame and wealth – it is enjoying challenges; it’s finding our element and working hard at making whatever that might be, including the luxury of having time with family and friends. “The task,” Csikszentmihalyi wrote, “is to learn how to enjoy everyday life without diminishing other people’s chances to enjoy theirs.”
Add to that simple goal a little tinsel, holly, nut roast and turkey and, let us hope, for those with and without a faith, we might be on our way to a very happy Christmas break.
