The Full Catastrophe

Much as we try to be mindful, we can often find ourselves sleepwalking through life. We like to think that our future stretches out eternally, but every now and then life finds its own way to wake us up to the passing of time. Nothing brings that point home quite like a reunion. My date with fate this week was a work reunion with a group of people who’d worked on a major project together in the early 90s. Given that it was a fairly young crowd to start with, those years have brought some striking changes – everything from emigration, babies and high-flying careers to a heart transplant, divorce and sadly the loss of some of our colleagues. Hearing their stories reminded me that the real challenge in life comes in handling the cards you are dealt with as much elegance of spirit as you can muster.

The dark side of the new-age trend of relentless positivity is an immaturity and naïveté that never factors in the possibility of loss and failure. As John Lennon famously said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Of course we need to do all that is possible to pursue our dreams, but somewhere along the line, chances are the gods are going to throw us a curveball. When that happens, the tough really get going. If they’re smart, they also know that from what appears to be tragedy can also come growth and opportunity. Adversity tempers the spirit and, used wisely, can bring us to depths in ourselves that we would never otherwise have found.

The psychologist, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who worked extensively with the bereaved and dying, touched on this transformative power when she said “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, suffering, struggle, loss and found their way out of the depths. These people have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep, loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
It’s human nature to want to avoid suffering – and there’s certainly no benefit in courting it – but if you’re in the throes of one of life’s Olympic-standard challenges, you can take comfort in knowing that you will emerge wiser, if not unscathed. The great inspirational figures of our time are those who’ve weathered the tough times and come through them as deeper, more genuine and more purposeful people. Think Nelson Mandela, The Dalai Lama, Ghandi, even Princess Diana. We can relate to characters who’ve been through the mill and had the grace and the grit to get up off the floor and channel their own suffering into helping others. I’m with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross – that would be my definition of a beautiful person too.

A fabulous life will never be all champagne and roses. A fabulous life is one where you feel grateful for every last bit of it – joy, tragedy, fun or failure. The most famous movie advocate of embracing all that life can throw at you is Nikos Kazantzakis’ wild and crazy philosopher, Zorba The Greek. When asked if he is married, Zorba replies “Am I not a man? And is not a man stupid? I'm a man. So I married. Wife, children, house, everything - the full catastrophe.”
Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the University of Massachusetts Stress Reduction Clinic says Zorba’s response embodies a supreme appreciation for the richness of life and the inevitability of all its dilemmas, sorrows, tragedies and ironies. “His way is to ‘dance’ in the gale of the full catastrophe, to celebrate life, to laugh with it and at himself, even in the face of personal failure and defeat. In doing so, he is never weighed down for long, never ultimately defeated either by the world or by his own considerable folly.”

“It was not meant to be a lament, nor does it mean that being married or having children is a catastrophe”, he adds. “It captures something positive about the human spirit’s ability to come to grips with what is most difficult in life and to find within it room to grow in strength and wisdom. For me, facing the full catastrophe means finding and coming to terms with what is most human in ourselves. There is not one person on the planet who does not have his or her own version of the full catastrophe.”

Wherever you are on the wheel of fortune right now, up or down, let Zorba remind you to wring every last bit of wisdom, connection and sweetness out of it. The lean times can bring us closer to our friends and loved ones and show us how much we truly appreciate them. The good times can fly by if we don’t pay attention, so if something great is happening for you right now, drink it in. Don’t let the moment pass you by. If there’s something you’ve been meaning to try or a project you’ve been putting off, get started. Maybe there’s an area of your life that you haven’t put much effort into – there’s no point in having half a catastrophe, so make sure you go for the full one and enjoy it all the way.

I’ll leave you with a final bit of advice from Zorba on not taking yourself or your life too seriously: “Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly at all, in my view, is not to have one.”

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All material © 2006 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 27 Mar 06)