On happiness

In the movie Donnie Darko, Donnie disses a class exercise that aims to describe human behaviour as either love or fear related. Donnie’s argument is you can’t just lump things into two broad categories given the whole spectrum of human emotion.

One of the questions that first preoccupied me when I was a child (in fact it was probably around the time that I was learning English) was: what is the opposite of happiness? Well, there’s unhappiness, but there’s also sadness. Which of these is the true answer, if there can be an answer that can be said to be “true”? Sadness is absence of happiness, right? But unhappiness encapsulates everything outside of happiness, including sadness. And then what about anger? I’m not happy when I’m angry. And then all these other things would occur to me: what about remorse, regret, bitterness, discontent, content, dissatisfaction, satisfaction, nonchalance... For just an example, if I am content or satisfied with something, I am not ecstatic about it, I am just not dissatisfied about it. Argh, human emotion is so hard to explain!

Recently my life has taken quite a turn – for the best! – and I am often (and I mean often) asked whether I’m happy? Well, the truth is yes, as a broad category I am a happy person, but no, as in not every minute of my day can I describe my mood or emotional state as “happy”. But how can you tell someone you care about that you’re not “happy” and have them not also believe that you’re an “unhappy” person or that you’re upset or bothered or annoyed, etc. (what most people associate with an emotion that isn’t happiness)? Aside from the fact that some would say I’m cyclothymic, even normal human emotion varies throughout the day, commonly even through the course of a conversation. A friend might play a trick on you and you’re surprised, then you realise it’s a joke and you laugh, then you want revenge so you play punch them (behaviour of aggression, intent of camaraderie), eventually you’re serious again and you discuss work. I was happy when I was laughing, but I am not “unhappy” as a negative emotion towards him by the time we get around to discuss work.

Personally, I have always found the concept of happiness so limiting. If all I ever got out of life was happiness, if it was all I strived for every second of every day, I would probably be a very miserable person. Maybe it is better to say at the end of a day that I lived, not just strived for an impossible dream. But I am happy about where my life is now (broadly, think season and not weather).

A quote:

“I would urge that you be dissatisfied. Not dissatisfied in the sense of disgruntlement, but dissatisfied in the sense of that ‘divine discontent’ which throughout the history of the world has produced all real progress and reform.
I hope you will never be satisfied. I hope you will constantly feel the urge to improve and perfect not only yourself, but also the world around you.” – Charles Becker

On being a foreigner

I once walked into an exam room and the first question I was asked was how I ended up with an Australian accent and a last name like mine. Common question; I don’t mind it all, it’s a great conversation starter. But when I was asked if I ever wanted to go home, I didn’t know what to answer. My home across the river? Yes… but that wasn’t the question.

Milan Kundera wrote a book called ‘Ignorance’ about a girl born in the Czech Republic who moves to France and lives there for about 20 years. Here’s a quote about her experiences as an émigré:

“Oh, the French, you know – they have no need for experience. With them, judgments precede experience. When we got there, they didn’t need any information from us. They were already thoroughly informed that Stalinism is an evil and emigration is a tragedy. They weren’t interested in what we thought, they were interested in us as living proof of what they thought. So they were generous to us and proud of it. When Communism collapsed all of a sudden, they looked hard at me, an investigator’s look. And after that, something soured. I didn’t behave the way they expected…. They had done a lot for me. They saw me as the embodiment of an émigré’s suffering. Then the time came for me to confirm that suffering by my joyous return to the homeland. And that confirmation didn’t happen. They felt duped. And so did I, because up till then I’d thought they loved me not for my suffering but for myself.”

‘Ignorance’ talks about nostalgia. At different times in my life, in particularly the last few years, I have been asked whether I have ever considered returning home. Home? I am home! Home is where my mum is. I guess I’m a foreigner and nothing can change that, not even time. Does it bother me, the expectation that I should long for a place I actually feel no connection to? Yes, the expectation bothers me. My discord comes from not being about to understand why I should not consider this — Australia — my home? Because others were born here and I wasn’t? Home is where I raise up my tent, the place I long for when I’m away. The place I long for is the one that inhabits the people I love, my family. That home is not in Central America; what is there is a memory, not my present or the future I choose. But people have this expectation that is separate to my desires, and this expectation renders me a traitor – a traitor for betraying an ideal that is not my own!

Sometimes people ask me if I remember much about El Salvador since when I left I was around 9 years old. I remember, of course; children remember by the time they’re nine. I remember the things that are of value to me, the good or bad things that shaped me. Some memories are still like photographs and seem distant; some more vivid and play over and over. But yes, I remember. It wasn’t all bad. War was almost always background for us (my family). Family, Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s books, school, and Mexican soap operas on TV were in the foreground (for me, at least). It wasn’t all rosy, either, as some people choose to believe, landscapes which they imagine are irreproducible. And although the war was real, it was something you get around by living your everyday life. People do that, we weren’t the only ones. We weren’t specially apt or adaptable; we were common people living in a place where a lot of common people also lived. Sometimes when there’s a big crack in the ground, people learn to walk around it and pretty soon it’s accepted as part of the landscape which isn’t questioned and you can’t suffer over it. Romanticism is for the memories of the past, you can’t suffer from it in the moment.

Yes, I remember El Salvador, certain places and certain people. Why do people doubt that I would remember? Because they (both “romantics” from my country and people born here who insist my home is elsewhere) don’t understand how I could remember El Salvador and yet not long for it again. Memory is not the same as nostalgia. Patriotism doesn’t and shouldn’t rule memory.

Maybe it’s time I write my own version of my story:
I was born in El Salvador, lived there until I was nine. There was a civil war; I was a kid, I didn’t know the reasons for it and I didn’t have a view either way. My uncle was killed by a land mine and my best friend was killed by a bomb; our family was one of the least affected by the war. We immigrated to Australia with all my family. All of it: mum, grandmother, brothers, sister, cousins and aunts. I didn’t know my father very well, I still don’t. If he is still alive, it is highly probable he is still living in El Salvador. My whole family and my whole life, most of my friends, and my ambitions live in Australia. I am Salvadorian; I live in Australia. I am at home.

On "becoming" beautiful

I recently bought a new camera and I’ve just been taking photos of all sorts of random things and people. One of the things most people will often say to me when I ask to take their photo, though, is “not now, I look horrible”... Now, to myself I think “but this is how these people have chosen to present themselves today, why would that be ‘horrible’?” As I was thinking this, it reminded me of something I noticed a while ago – and maybe it has something to do with self-identity or the human concept of “beauty”. At the same time, I don’t want to be a hypocrite, and I’ll admit I once thought like those people.

Beauty is a very difficult to define concept, of course. You could say a rose is beautiful and say a woman’s face is beautiful, and not mean that the woman’s face looks like a rose. Also, one man’s wife may be beautiful to him but another man who has just met her may think nothing of her. There’s subjectivity involved, history and knowledge of a thing’s other than physical attributes involved, circumstance, and relativity of one thing to another of its kind.

I’ve always liked to take photos of things – just for fun. When I was younger I started to notice how some of the best photos to take are of children. Not all children, but children who are young enough to recognize themselves in a mirror, but not so young as to be too easily distractible when they’re awake. And when I say “the best photos”, I mean those that are most close to reality, the one’s that replicate a moment in time a little closer to the truth. I took so many photos of one of my nieces at one stage because with this childhood innocence came this absolute sincerity that even a camera (in my unskilled hands) could capture. Now, this little girl was just being herself and making it so easy for me to capture that “self”, so I took so many photos because I knew that the day would come where she would ask me if she looked ‘good’ in a photo. In fact what happened was that she then went to school and was taught to smile whenever a camera was in front of her. Don’t get me wrong, she was still beautiful, her appearance evolving with age (as it never ceases to do during our lifespan), but she had lost that sincerity that once came so naturally to her – and all because someone taught her that an attractive – and so photo-worthy face – must have a smile on it. A smile can make any face beautiful, that’s true, but that was probably first said about sincere smiles.

Before this period, though, my niece went through a stage where she figured out that the thing looking back at her in the mirror was herself. She had learnt before that what the general concept of a human face was: two eyes, nose, two nostrils, ears, mouth, hair, and attached to the rest of a body with arms, legs, etc. We first learn by stereotype, it’s essential; the world is just too difficult to comprehend otherwise. The fun times were standing in front of the mirror, her and me, pointing at this little person in the mirror and she realising it was herself because she is standing next to a person that looks exactly like me. Then she would laugh for ages. Most children will do that. They don’t notice that their clothes are all stained from when they spilt food on themselves, that there is things in their hair that came from the grass in the backyard. All these things are inconsequential details, the reality is that there in the mirror are two human beings, one which is herself, and one someone other than herself. This is self-awareness.

To return to photos, though. What is the first thing you notice when you look back at old photos? Yourself! Inevitably that is what you notice, it’s probably instinctual. You disregard the surroundings and the other people in the photo, and it’s not vanity, it’s just constancy to recognize yourself as you once were (because all moments are always in the past). Everybody has a self-image, a physical image and also a cognitive one that would recognize your own style of reasoning or speaking, for example. So the next thing we do with photos is to compare the image in the photo with our internal self-image, but also to this other image about “beautiful” human beings we have been conditioned to believe. So, often the internal thought process goes “does this look like me? does it look like me at my best physical appearance? and, does it look like those models in magazines and film actors?” When we were children the thought process was, “what is it? is it human?” and “who is it?”. Things were much simpler then. So, I won’t go on about how this “beautiful human being” mental image came to be formed because most people can probably guess it already.

My niece grew up, and she still likes photos; she even knows how to pose now. The skill difference between professional models and the rest of us is that the pros know how to look natural in a completely staged environment. That “natural” look and certain biometric features that some scientists with lack of better things to study have found is what we usually define as beauty. But my niece is beautiful too. She is beautiful because she’s my little girl, because she is a child, because there’s this sincerity about her, and because I love her. I’ve said nothing of her appearance, but you get the concept of a beautiful child like the hundreds we’ve all seen before. She is confident in herself and of her appearance. She’ll always let you take her photo, as long as you know she will always smile on cue for you.

But now, as adults, a lot of the people I come across don’t want their photo taken because they don’t look “beautiful” enough. I didn’t want a photo of a “beautiful” person, if I did I’d have cut it out of a magazine; I wanted a photo of the person who I’m asking. Has this image of un-beauty been so deeply ingrained in us or is it a universal lack of self-esteem that makes us shy away?

You know what else I’ve noticed in the last few years also? That the people that make good photos to take of are, other than children, the elderly and indigenous people with little exposure to western society. People of poor countries also have a tendency to view a request from a friend for a photo as a gesture similar to asking for a glass of water: ‘gladly, my friend, if I have enough to give’. And why do they care less than the average person about their appearance? I think because they think of a photo just as that, a thing that eventually will just come to be on a piece of paper as a representation of an event in time. But what about the elderly? Well, then I started thinking that perhaps they have had more time to have also come to this same reasoning, but also to accept their own physical appearance and it’s changing nature.

I was twenty-six by the time I finally stopped feeling ashamed of my own body. My weight has fluctuated since I was young, and since about the age of 12 I was ashamed of it. I’ve always struggled with low self-esteem despite my family thinking that I was OK because I got good grades at school, inside there was this loathing of myself from the core to my very skin. I felt ashamed of my body, to be who I was and how I was, and the last thing I wanted was to look at myself and let alone let anyone else see me. Mirrors were extremely uncomfortable places for me to stand in front of. Having to have a photo taken was almost an offensive gesture made at me. I didn’t want to look at myself. Anyhow, the whole thing made my life not very interactive and lonesome when I was young, though with study commitments I gradually expanded the number of things I became comfortable doing.

When I was 26, in my final year of med school, I finally came to the realisation that this was it, that this was my body, that this is who Vanessa was and I would just have to accept it. I finally realised that the people who spoke to me, who befriended me, or who were otherwise associated with me had chosen to do so despite of what horribleness I thought I looked like. If others could interact with me so easily, accept me as I was, then why should I not? The realisation sounds so simple now, but it had taken me 26, almost 27, years to reach. After that, it made romantic relationships easier to conceive, both in my mind and physically. I felt more at ease with being my true self. And even though 26 (or since) was probably not my best year in terms of physical appearance, I finally also accepted the changing nature of my appearance. And guess what? I finally stopped caring about what I looked like in photos.

On homosexuality, the DSM, and Pedophilia...

When I was younger people used to tell me that homosexual people were bad, that they were defective, that they were evil. These people were well-meaning religious clerics, family, family friends, school teachers, and other respectable adults. I emphasize well-meaning because their attitudes were not what we now commonly refer to as homophobic, discriminatory, judgemental, ignorant, or bigoted. Their views reflected a common majority view. They weren’t bad people saying derogatory things about a minority group of people; they were just repeating what was common thought at the time. These were good people.

Now, the common view at the time –that homosexual persons were sexual deviants, less than healthy “normal” humans- was grounded in the scientific and medical descriptions accepted until very late in human history. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) classified homosexuality as a mental disorder until as late as 1973, as did the World Health Organisation in its International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Gradually in a period since the mid 1970s the classification of mental illness was ratified with increasing knowledge of prevalence and non-observance of the common disclaimer in these classification systems: “the symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning”. If a behaviour is sufficiently common and does not cause significant negative outcomes, then it is a tough call to call it a mental disorder.

Of course, the other thing that happened since the inception of the DSM and similar classification systems and the 1970s was the so-called “sexual revolution” of the 1960s. The sexual revolution abolished many taboos (or perhaps constraints) on sexual activity. One such taboo was that of sexual activity between members of the same (phenotypic) sex. As a result of the sexual revolution a lot of people came to experiment with all different forms of sexual expression, although most commonly this was frequent non-monogamous heterosexual intercourse. So one could pose the question, did this social breakdown of a variety of sexual taboos (at the time they called it something akin to generalised immorality or looseness) lead to the increased acceptance of the people who engage in homosexual activity just because homosexual interaction happened to be one of those taboos? Perhaps, but it most likely was also (at least in addition) due to the lack of findings of “dysfunction” from medical and scientific point of views.

Recently I attended a talk on psychopathology, or, actually, the classification of mental disorders. The question was posed: what is a mental disorder? Something that is inherently bad? Something bad because some scientists and medical doctors said so? Something that makes the affected person or ones associated to him or her feel bad? Something that makes the affected person unable to function effectively or satisfactorily in his micro- or macrocosm? A behaviour that is uncommon in a particular environment or situation? A behaviour politicians and lawmakers decided is bad? A behaviour that a large proportion of the person’s peers would judge unreasonable or bad? Now, regarding homosexuality and its transition in classification systems from “bad” to “normal”, we could answer this question in many of the dimensions posed above. But my point is not to argue “homosexuality: good or bad?” but rather to provide a backdrop to one scenario posed to me, which at first sight scared me deeply, so I want to finally address it and put it to rest.

Now, to speak of the scenario posed to me (and that use to plague me), I have to first emphasize I’m playing devil’s advocate here. As I mentioned before, I grew up being told that homosexuality is bad, homosexuals are deviants, abnormal, less than, etc. Gradually that story changed and homosexual persons became persons (foremost) who happened to engage in homosexual activity. What if it were possible that this happen to other behaviours currently considered "abnormal"; that they also went from being described by others as “bad” to now being described as “normal”? And this change could come about through change in social attitude or the discovery of a high prevalence of the condition. After all, if all the people of the town are crazy and the king is sane, then for being a sane minority the king will be considered crazy by the townsfolk. The scenario posed was about pedophilia.

The DSM-IV-TR classifies pedophilia as a paraphilia in which there are “over a period of at least 6 months, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges or behaviours involving sexual activity with a pre-pubescent child or children; and the person is at least age 16 years and at least 5 years older than the child”. Of course, it includes the common DSM disclaimer, “the fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviours cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupation, or other important areas of functioning”. Now consider a world where pedophilia occurs in every culture and ethnic group, in members of different socioeconomic classes, includes members from across all professions and trades; a world where 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 7 boys are sexually interfered with by an adult; and a world where people have become too accustomed to saying “it’s OK because everyone does it”. This is exactly the world we live in! So is it purely OK, really “normal”, if prevalence rates are high enough? (I hope not.)

In a hypothetical new and vile world, imagine seeing children talking to each other in a playground. One asks, ‘so when did your daddy devirginize you’? The other answers, ‘I was six. Hurt like hell. Now we only do it in the shed every week when mum’s not home’. A third one says, ‘you’re lucky. My mum’s friend did me when I was four – and I can’t even remember the first time’. Cut ahead to a generation from that and cutting scars on human forearms have become the norm so much that you’d think this is how we were born, with multiple lacerations tracking from our wrists to our shoulders. There’s no taboo about it. The kids go out with daddy for their fishing and “playing” trips. Mum knows, dad is not ashamed, and the children all share their common carnal knowledge amongst themselves at school. The mental disorder classification books no longer include any lifestyle choices or paraphilias anymore....

But wait, to wake yourself up from this nightmare, remember that one disclaimer in the definitions of illness: “the symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning”. Despite the unfortunately high prevalence of pedophilia in this world, the fact that it is harmful makes it not classifiable as a variant of normality we will/should all just accept. Child sexual abuse has no advantages except to the perpetrator, it’s an abuse relationship, a two-party transaction with only one person benefiting. In legal terms they would equate this to at least theft. You can’t steal from a child and say he consented because he would trade in a bar of gold for a simple candy, lacking that knowledge of how things done today can affect your whole life to come. You can’t just say homosexuality is the same as pedophilia because they are both types of sexual interactions; so is heterosexual intercourse, and why do less people compare that to pedophilia? Because there are differences!

From 2006 to 2010 there existed a political party in the Netherlands (PVND) that provided political advocacy for pedophile groups and organisations. One of their agendas was to legalize child pornography and to lower the legal age of consent to sex down to 12 years old. Commonly pedophile groups argue that children have the ability (and so the right) to enjoy sexual activity alone, with their peers, or with an older adult. Consequently, they argue, if the child consents to the sexual contact, then it should be legal for the adult/s to engage so with them. They’ll go so far as to argue that sexual contact with children is “good for them” and their development. Of course the issue that is of concern to other (non-pedophile) adults is that children’s ability to consent is limited by their experience and knowledge of consequences. A child can know that candy has a pleasant flavour, for example, and he can decide / consent to eat that given to him by his parent or friend, but the consequences of eating a piece of candy (e.g. early tooth decay, or not wanting to eat the rest of his dinner afterwards) are hardly the same as “consenting” to sexual activity. The consequences of childhood sexual abuse are commonly seen in our psychiatric wards, in the patients we all struggle to interact with: the personality disordered, the limitless cases of deliberate self-injury and drug abuse, the repeat victims of domestic abuse who go around either recreating or trying to erase their childhood experiences. This is too sad – and the worst thing we can do is blame the child, say he or she “consented”.

Pedophiles abuse people; they cause harm. This is not a time- or era-dependent opinion. It is so not the same as homosexuality or heterosexuality or any other way competently-consenting adults choose to interact sexually. And I think we have all come to that same conclusion. The only thing for us as a society still to debate about this and many other negative actions towards other human beings (e.g. murder) is whether such acts constitute criminality or mental illness, and which are the best ways to decrease our childhood sexual abuse rates.

(Sorry for the discussion on homosexuality together with pedophilia, I was obviously mainly aiming to contrast not compare.)