Professor Laurie Santos didn’t set out to create the most popular course in the history of Yale University and the most talked-about college course in America. She just wanted her students to be happy. And they certainly look happy as they file into a church — a literal church, Battell Chapel, that’s been converted to a lecture hall — on the Yale campus on a sunny April afternoon, lugging backpacks and chatting before taking their seats in the pews. They’ve just returned from a two-week spring break. The weather outside is gorgeous. Professor Santos is playing her pre-class get-pumped playlist featuring the Black-Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling,” And, let’s not forget, all of these students are currently going to Yale. What’s not to be happy about?
Quite a bit, it turns out. The very fact that Santos’s new course, PSYC 157: Psychology and the Good Life, is so wildly popular, with over 1,200 enrolled students, suggests that she’s on to something when she tells me one day, pre-lecture, “College students are much more overwhelmed, much more stressed, much more anxious, and much more depressed than they’ve ever been. I think we really have a crisis writ large at colleges in how students are doing in terms of self-care and mental health.” Then she adds, “Sadly, I don’t think it’s just in colleges.”
(continues)
Thursday, May 31, 2018
Monday, May 28, 2018
Risk delight
“A Brief for the Defense”
“If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world.”
-Jack Gilbert
On Being-Elizabeth Gilbert, Choosing Curiosity Over Fear
==
...And I think motion is a big piece of it. I've learned to give myself all the credit in the world simply for being in motion. “Did you do something today toward this thing? Then you're good.” [laughs] Was it great? No. Was it fun? No. But did you do it? Did you keep the ball rolling? Did you keep another step on that path going? Then you're fine. That's it.
MS. TIPPETT: I love that, just the idea of motion itself being a virtue, and — because it's real. It's realistic. It's — there's nothing cerebral about that. But do you know that book by Annie Dillard, The Writing Life?
MS. GILBERT: Yes, I do.
MS. TIPPETT: There are these sentences that I read there years ago, and I put them in front of myself recently when I was writing this book, which was so painful. She said, “At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then — and only then — it is handed to you.” [laughs]
And I thought of that when I was reading how you go back and forth in Big Magic, especially between — yes, you work like a farmer, and then, sometimes, there's this fairy dust thing that happens. And it's both/and.
MS. GILBERT: Both/and, yes. Thank you for saying that, because I feel like the choice, the false choice that people are given are these two ideas. One is that it's all coming from me: Nothing funny is going on here; there is no spirit moving across the face of the earth. I'm just a pile of DNA, my cerebral cortex is firing off, and that is why my creativity exists, right? It's all me; it's only me — which is great, except then, how do you explain the mysterious part that you can't explain, about why one day you were in flow, and it did feel like something was coming through you, not from you, and you brushed up against a sense of great mystery and communion. And then the next day, Wednesday morning, it was gone. [laughs]
That's just too hard to explain in very empirical terms. And then the other choice you're given is the very hippie-trippy idea of “I'm just a vessel. I'm just a vessel; channel — it just comes through me.” Then why am I so tired? [laughs] Because I've been working hard. So there's some sort of a — there's some third way. And I think the third way is, it's a collaboration between a human being's labors and the mysteries of inspiration. And that's the most interesting dance that I think you can be involved in, but you are very much an agent in that story. You're not just a passive receptacle. And also, it's not entirely in your hands. And standing comfortably within that contradiction is, I think, where you find sanity in the creative process — if you can find it. [laughs]
MS. TIPPETT: You have this wonderful idea that — I think this is partly the way you said it and partly the way I wrote it down — that our planet is inhabited by ideas; that ideas are part of the ecosystem, part of the biosphere like other living beings — that ideas interact with other animate and inanimate matter. And actually, I think you talk about articulating that idea through an experience you had with Ann Patchett.
MS. GILBERT: Yeah, this is the most magical thing that's ever — and when I say “magical,” I mean it very much in the Hogwartsian sense of “magical.” I had an idea for a novel, and it was to be about a — I'll just summarize it very quickly — a middle-aged spinster from Minnesota who had been working at the same company for 25 years and was quietly in love with her married boss, who sort of — she was invisible to him. He gets involved in a very ill-advised scheme down in the Amazon jungle and sends a bunch of money and a person down there, and the money and the person disappear. And then he sends her down there to figure out what happens, at which point her orderly life is flipped upside down into chaos. And it's also a love story. And I wrote a proposal for this novel. I got a book advance for it. I started working on it. I was doing research for it. And then I got waylaid by some other things that were going on in my life and ended up writing a completely different book, and I left it aside. And when I came back a few years later, I found that the life force energy, for lack of a better term, the spirit of that book was no longer there.
And around that same time, I met and made friends with the novelist, Ann Patchett. And we had this very dynamic and exciting meeting where we admitted that we loved each other's work, and she gave me a big kiss right on the lips. And we became pen pals, and we started writing letters to each other. And about a month later, she wrote me a letter saying she had just started working on a book about the Amazon jungle. And I told her, “Well, that's so strange. I had been working on one too, but it's gone.” And then a few months later, we met, and she said, “Tell me what your Amazon book was about.” And now she was 100 pages into hers. And her book, which of course became the extraordinary novel State of Wonder, was a book about a middle-aged spinster from Minnesota who'd been working for this company for 25 years and had been quietly in love with her married boss to whom she was invisible. And it was exactly the same story. And then we did that thing that pregnant women do, where they count backward to figure out when conception occurred, right?
MS. TIPPETT: [laughs] Who got pregnant first. Right.
MS. GILBERT: And so we did the math, and it was really at the same time that I had lost mine that she had gotten hers. And we like to think that the idea jumped from my mind to hers during our little kiss that we had when we met. That's our magical thinking around it. But it's — there is no explanation for that other than the one that I've always abided by, which is that ideas are conscious and living, and they have will, and they have great desire to be made, and they spin through the cosmos, looking for human collaborators.
MS. TIPPETT: I was thinking — I had a conversation with Rosanne Cash once, and she started talking about the process of songwriting. And she was using this language, like, you have to have your catcher's mitt on, right? Similar thing...
“If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world.”
-Jack Gilbert
On Being-Elizabeth Gilbert, Choosing Curiosity Over Fear
==
...And I think motion is a big piece of it. I've learned to give myself all the credit in the world simply for being in motion. “Did you do something today toward this thing? Then you're good.” [laughs] Was it great? No. Was it fun? No. But did you do it? Did you keep the ball rolling? Did you keep another step on that path going? Then you're fine. That's it.
MS. TIPPETT: I love that, just the idea of motion itself being a virtue, and — because it's real. It's realistic. It's — there's nothing cerebral about that. But do you know that book by Annie Dillard, The Writing Life?
MS. GILBERT: Yes, I do.
MS. TIPPETT: There are these sentences that I read there years ago, and I put them in front of myself recently when I was writing this book, which was so painful. She said, “At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then — and only then — it is handed to you.” [laughs]
And I thought of that when I was reading how you go back and forth in Big Magic, especially between — yes, you work like a farmer, and then, sometimes, there's this fairy dust thing that happens. And it's both/and.
MS. GILBERT: Both/and, yes. Thank you for saying that, because I feel like the choice, the false choice that people are given are these two ideas. One is that it's all coming from me: Nothing funny is going on here; there is no spirit moving across the face of the earth. I'm just a pile of DNA, my cerebral cortex is firing off, and that is why my creativity exists, right? It's all me; it's only me — which is great, except then, how do you explain the mysterious part that you can't explain, about why one day you were in flow, and it did feel like something was coming through you, not from you, and you brushed up against a sense of great mystery and communion. And then the next day, Wednesday morning, it was gone. [laughs]
That's just too hard to explain in very empirical terms. And then the other choice you're given is the very hippie-trippy idea of “I'm just a vessel. I'm just a vessel; channel — it just comes through me.” Then why am I so tired? [laughs] Because I've been working hard. So there's some sort of a — there's some third way. And I think the third way is, it's a collaboration between a human being's labors and the mysteries of inspiration. And that's the most interesting dance that I think you can be involved in, but you are very much an agent in that story. You're not just a passive receptacle. And also, it's not entirely in your hands. And standing comfortably within that contradiction is, I think, where you find sanity in the creative process — if you can find it. [laughs]
MS. TIPPETT: You have this wonderful idea that — I think this is partly the way you said it and partly the way I wrote it down — that our planet is inhabited by ideas; that ideas are part of the ecosystem, part of the biosphere like other living beings — that ideas interact with other animate and inanimate matter. And actually, I think you talk about articulating that idea through an experience you had with Ann Patchett.
MS. GILBERT: Yeah, this is the most magical thing that's ever — and when I say “magical,” I mean it very much in the Hogwartsian sense of “magical.” I had an idea for a novel, and it was to be about a — I'll just summarize it very quickly — a middle-aged spinster from Minnesota who had been working at the same company for 25 years and was quietly in love with her married boss, who sort of — she was invisible to him. He gets involved in a very ill-advised scheme down in the Amazon jungle and sends a bunch of money and a person down there, and the money and the person disappear. And then he sends her down there to figure out what happens, at which point her orderly life is flipped upside down into chaos. And it's also a love story. And I wrote a proposal for this novel. I got a book advance for it. I started working on it. I was doing research for it. And then I got waylaid by some other things that were going on in my life and ended up writing a completely different book, and I left it aside. And when I came back a few years later, I found that the life force energy, for lack of a better term, the spirit of that book was no longer there.
And around that same time, I met and made friends with the novelist, Ann Patchett. And we had this very dynamic and exciting meeting where we admitted that we loved each other's work, and she gave me a big kiss right on the lips. And we became pen pals, and we started writing letters to each other. And about a month later, she wrote me a letter saying she had just started working on a book about the Amazon jungle. And I told her, “Well, that's so strange. I had been working on one too, but it's gone.” And then a few months later, we met, and she said, “Tell me what your Amazon book was about.” And now she was 100 pages into hers. And her book, which of course became the extraordinary novel State of Wonder, was a book about a middle-aged spinster from Minnesota who'd been working for this company for 25 years and had been quietly in love with her married boss to whom she was invisible. And it was exactly the same story. And then we did that thing that pregnant women do, where they count backward to figure out when conception occurred, right?
MS. TIPPETT: [laughs] Who got pregnant first. Right.
MS. GILBERT: And so we did the math, and it was really at the same time that I had lost mine that she had gotten hers. And we like to think that the idea jumped from my mind to hers during our little kiss that we had when we met. That's our magical thinking around it. But it's — there is no explanation for that other than the one that I've always abided by, which is that ideas are conscious and living, and they have will, and they have great desire to be made, and they spin through the cosmos, looking for human collaborators.
MS. TIPPETT: I was thinking — I had a conversation with Rosanne Cash once, and she started talking about the process of songwriting. And she was using this language, like, you have to have your catcher's mitt on, right? Similar thing...
Thursday, May 24, 2018
Against despair
Despair
So much gloom and doubt in our poetry—
flowers wilting on the table,
the self regarding itself in a watery mirror.
flowers wilting on the table,
the self regarding itself in a watery mirror.
Dead leaves cover the ground,
the wind moans in the chimney,
and the tendrils of the yew tree inch toward the coffin.
the wind moans in the chimney,
and the tendrils of the yew tree inch toward the coffin.
I wonder what the ancient Chinese poets
would make of all this,
these shadows and empty cupboards?
would make of all this,
these shadows and empty cupboards?
Today, with the sun blazing in the trees,
my thoughts turn to the great
tenth-century celebrator of experience,
my thoughts turn to the great
tenth-century celebrator of experience,
Wa-Hoo, whose delight in the smallest things
could hardly be restrained,
and to his joyous counterpart in the western provinces,
Ye-Hah.
could hardly be restrained,
and to his joyous counterpart in the western provinces,
Ye-Hah.
“Despair” by Billy Collins from Ballistics. © Random House, 2008. Reprinted with permission.
https://www.writersalmanac.org/index.html%3Fp=8071.html
Friday, May 18, 2018
Monday, May 7, 2018
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