Good Business_ Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [124]
Conversely, many individuals who have suffered harshly end up not only surviving, but also thoroughly enjoying their lives. How is it possible that people are able to achieve harmony of mind, and grow in complexity, even when some of the worst things imaginable happen to them? That is the outwardly simple question this chapter will explore. In the process, we shall examine some of the strategies people use to cope with stressful events, and review how an autotelic self can manage to create order out of chaos.
TRAGEDIES TRANSFORMED
It would be naively idealistic to claim that no matter what happens to him, a person in control of consciousness will be happy. There are certainly limits to how much pain, or hunger, or deprivation a body can endure. Yet it is also true, as Dr. Franz Alexander has so well stated: “The fact that the mind rules the body is, in spite of its neglect by biology and medicine, the most fundamental fact which we know about the process of life.” Holistic medicine and such books as Norman Cousins’s account of his successful fight against terminal illness and Dr. Bernie Siegel’s descriptions of self-healing are beginning to redress the abstractly materialist view of health that has become so prevalent in this century. The relevant point to be made here is that a person who knows how to find flow from life is able to enjoy even situations that seem to allow only despair.
Rather incredible examples of how people achieve flow despite extreme handicaps have been collected by Professor Fausto Massimini of the psychology department of the University of Milan. One group he and his team studied was composed of paraplegics, generally young people who at some point in the past, usually as a result of an accident, have lost the use of their limbs. The unexpected finding of this study was that a large proportion of the victims mentioned the accident that caused paraplegia as both one of the most negative and one of the most positive events in their lives. The reason tragic events were seen as positive was that they presented the victim with very clear goals while reducing contradictory and inessential choices. The patients who learned to master the new challenges of their impaired situation felt a clarity of purpose they had lacked before. Learning to live again was in itself a matter of enjoyment and pride, and they were able to turn the accident from a source of entropy into an occasion of inner order.
Lucio, one of the members of this group, was a twenty-year-old happy-go-lucky gas station attendant when a motorcycle accident paralyzed him below the waist. He had previously liked playing rugby and listening to music, but basically he remembers his life as purposeless and uneventful. After the accident his enjoyable experiences have increased both in number and complexity. Upon recovery from the tragedy he enrolled in college, graduated in languages, and now works as a freelance tax consultant. Both study and work are intense sources of flow; so are fishing and shooting with a bow and arrow. He is currently a regional archery champion—competing from a wheelchair.
These are some of the comments Lucio made in his interview: “When I became paraplegic, it was like being born again. I had to learn from scratch everything I used to know, but in a different way. I had to learn to dress myself, to use my head better. I had to become part of the environment, and use it without trying to control it…. it took commitment, willpower, and patience. As far as the future is concerned, I hope to keep improving, to keep breaking through the limitations of my handicap…. Everybody must have a purpose. After becoming a paraplegic, these improvements have become my life goal.”
Franco is another person in this group. His legs were immobilized five years ago, and he also developed severe urological problems, requiring several surgical operations. Before his accident he was an electrician, and he often enjoyed his work. But his most intense flow experience came from acrobatic dancing on Saturday