In Flow: The Psychology Of Optimal Experience,1 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi2 writes that happiness occurs as Flow, which he has described as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”3
Although I lack the epistemological or neuropsychological expertise to defend or refute his theses,4 Csikszentmihalyi’s notions about happiness ring true to me and many readers. While this brief consideration necessarily distorts his ideas by oversimplification (and the book is a good read in any case), I think these two excerpts shed light on the happiness Julie5 and I experienced.
Csikszentmihalyi explains the circumstances under which Flow occurs.
When we are actively involved in a difficult enterprise, in a task that stretches our mental and physical abilities. Any activity can do it. Working on a challenging job, riding the crest of a tremendous wave, and teaching one’s child the letters of the alphabet are the kinds of experiences that focus our whole being in a harmonious rush of energy, and lift us out of the anxieties and boredom that characterize so much of everyday life.
And he addresses love thusly:
How to keep love fresh? The answer is the same as it is for any other activity. To be enjoyable, a relationship must become more complex. To become more complex, the partners must discover new potentialities in themselves and in each other. To discover these, they must invest attention in each other - so that they can learn what thoughts and feelings, what dreams reside in their partner’s mind. This in itself is a never-ending process, a lifetime’s task. After one begins to really know another person, then many joint adventures become possible: traveling together, reading the same books, raising children, making and realizing plans all become more enjoyable and more meaningful. The specific details are unimportant. Each person must find out which ones are relevant to his or her own situation. What is important is the general principles: that sexuality, like any other aspect of life, can be made enjoyable if we are willing to take control of it, and cultivate it in the direction of greater complexity.
Sounds about right to me.
Footnotes
- HarperCollins Publishers, March 1991↩
- pronounced chick-sent-me-high-ee↩
- Interview in Wired Magazine, Issue 4.09, Sep 1996↩
- Csikszentmihalyi does have his detractors, if, for example, a web site named Why Flow Sucks is any indicator.↩
- Julie Showalter was the fiercely intelligent, sexy, and loving woman and prize-winning author, with whom I had a outrageously wonderful 20 year marriage that ended with her death in late 1999 from cancer diagnosed the week of our wedding nearly 20 years earlier. Many posts on this blog are about her, our unlikely romance, and our life together, and still others consist of her writings. Information can be found at Julie Showalter FAQ.↩
2 responses so far ↓
1 MindSpin // Jun 1, 2006 at 5:37 am
Is there any better qualification for knowing a truth than having lived it?
I am ever interested in parsing the choices that lead to happiness vs. the choices that lead to emptiness. Choosing to invest in a relationship in the whole-hearted manner that you and Julie did and that Csikszentmihalyi describes here seems to be a prerequisite for achieving the happiness love can bring as opposed to loneliness or the chafing disappointments of dysfunctional relationships.
2 MindSpin // Jun 1, 2006 at 5:53 am
Thinking further - “whole-hearted” is not, in and of itself, sufficient, is it, because mental engagement and investment are required, too, and not merely “heart,” or feeling. Yet I like the word “heart” because it implies something beyond sentiment; it implies great courage, great determination. A champion racehorse has “heart,” and that is why he (or she :->) wins. People who love have to have that sort of heart, too, and the story you and Julie shared bears that out.