ABOUT LIFE

Jim Delpino, MLSP, LCSW, BCD, is a psychotherapist in private practice for over 33 years.

Email:  jdelpino@aol.com   Phone: (215) 364-0139.

Jim Delpino, MLSP, LCSW, BCD, May 2014

Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary

While all people are inherently equal, not all lives are lived equally in terms of quality and aliveness. Having a quality and vibrant life is not defined as much by external circumstances and experience as it is by internal experience. The way experiences are explained and processed by the self is the highest determiner of how life is actually experienced.

While money and fame do not necessarily bring quality and vibrancy into a life, they don’t prevent it either. It’s inside the person that these blocks exist. Being poor doesn’t mean a quality life is unreachable because there are untold numbers of people without means above survival who are happy with their lives. The Buddha, Jesus and Gandhi were not wealthy people, yet few would disagree that these lives were of very high quality. Their lives included suffering and despair, but that did not ultimately define them.

The world is filled with a thousand faces of struggle and suffering. In far too many instances, the faces of struggling and suffering become the internal states of hopelessness, helplessness, sadness, fear, despair, addictions and the like. Those people may hover only slightly above death as they exist, but without very much positive experience. It’s as if they’re sleeping, unaware that other experience might be available to them. Counted among those who only exist are people rich and poor, young and old, famous and not—they live in a land from which there are only limited chances of escape. They walk among the living, although they feel barely alive. They’re no less deserving of compassion—and need more compassion than nearly everyone else. They often have gifts and talents they do not recognize, and consequently do not actualize.

There have always been those who are less asleep and more alive—not merely existing. Surely they struggle and have challenges; however, on balance they perceive more, enjoy more and have more to give to others than those who simply exist. In some ways their lives are better and in some ways their lives are harder.

The quality of their lives is higher and they experience themselves and others with more depth and vibrancy than those who only exist. There are more times of satisfaction with the general pace and progression of life. They do have occasional moments of self-actualized or flow experiences (per the work of Maslow and Csikszentmihalyi, for example). Curiously enough, most reports of flow and self-actualization involve transcendental moments in the course of great adversity, challenge and struggle. They are in some measure what Freud called “normal,” which he defined as “relatively symptom-free.” For those who function in the normal range, “If it ain’t broke, don't fix it” is the operative rule.

While those who simply “live” have increased quality and vibrancy in their lives, they fall short of thriving. Thriving means drinking more fully from the cup of life and allowing the overflow to go into others. When the cup is overflowing with joy, passion and compassion, it cannot be stopped from extending into the external world. As Shah said, “To see the ordinary as extraordinary and to see the extraordinary as ordinary,” describes states of experience where things are aligned and favorable, where events just seem to...flow. In these moments, the left and right hemispheres of the brain seem to operate in unison. The boundary between in-here and out-there evaporates—and in its place stands being more present in the moment.

Thriving, however, doesn’t mean freedom from challenge or suffering. Those who merely “exist” are consumed by the fires of challenge and suffering. Those who “live” have learned how to cope with challenge and suffering, and how to catapult themselves from challenge and suffering into states of flow and self-actualization.

In the flames of the forge the steel becomes stronger.

In the face of fear those who thrive show courage.

In the face of despair they have hope.

In the face of sadness they give love.