Alain de Botton on Emotional Education

[Music] well thank you thank you very much for coming to a talk which has a really strange sounding title emotional education we're very used to the idea that we need to get educated in certain sorts of skills maths Latin geography physics accountancy but the notion that we need to be educated in our emotional functioning is very peculiar surely we know about our emotions our capacities to love and to hate to feel anxious and to feel calm to direct our lives as we would wish surely we know all that stuff we don't need an education in the pursuit of a fulfilled emotional life but let me ask you just a question to see if we can just probe that um who in this room is happy to be married but not in love married but not in love any of you happy to be married but not you know tolerating tolerating the partner he's nice as you turn towards his okay alright but what we're what we're sensing is that there is a broad consensus that you guys would like to be married and happy okay interesting who here is happy to be in a job where you're earning money but you're not fulfilled okay a few people but broadly speaking this is why you need an emotional education because you have very high expectations it's very very hard to be married and happy it's very very hard to be in a job and fulfilled not merely earning money these are new expectations that we have of our lives and yet we continue to cling to an ancient model that somehow the knack for knowing how to pull off a successful emotional life is something that we should pick up by intuition ten years ago with colleagues I started up an organization called the school of life I'm here to present a new book which is simply called the school of life an emotional education it's ten years worth of our thinking around the business of how we might become emotional adults you know how to become an adult you just eat cereal and food and and wait for time to pass and you'll an emotional adult is a different thing most of us will be pushing 300 years old before we've really got the hang of it and but it's an aspiration you know we're operating in a world in which religion no longer guides us as it once did and it's within the context of a secularizing world that I and colleague set up the school of life you know when religion first went into decline in the mid 19th century in England in other parts of Western Europe people asked where were people going to get the emotional and spiritual guidance that churches had once given and there was a legitimate sense that there was going to be trouble because we are all mortal we need consolation we're isolated we're lonely we're confused and the churches for better and for worse dispensed guidance in these areas where was that going to come from if it worked out if one worked out that the whole story the biblical story was scientifically speaking nonsense well one answer came to the fore that culture would replace Scripture and that's why there was an extraordinary boom in the development of the humanities in the 19th century giant libraries were built theaters were built university courses in the arts were started for the very first time and a huge push was made towards the idea that what we have previously been able to gain from religion we would now be able to source from the plays of Shakespeare the novels of Jane Austen the the paintings of Rembrandt or Caravaggio that these sort of things would be able to give us what previous ages it found in religion it's a lovely idea partly is why we're here today you know this is in some ways part of what we're doing by gathering but without any insult on the fantastic hosts of this festival and giant done real success of this festival broadly speaking culture has not replaced Scripture and you know this because if you show up at the Tate Modern and you go on your knees and you say I'm lost I don't know how to live I I'm confused redeem me you will be very swiftly ushered out by some guards this is simply not what you can do or we show up at the University of Oxford and you're reading philosophy say the home of the largest questions you say I don't know where I should seek guidance for the largest questions um how can I be good how can I make sure my life is properly led again they would look at you very strangely one could say that those who are the guardians of culture in our society have a certain coolness about them it's as though the sort of people who they're imagine dealing with don't wake up at 3:00 in the morning as many of us here do I hope wondering what on earth it's all about and what we meant to be doing on on this planet there's a sort of sense that most of us know how to live well the starting assumption of a school of life is of course we don't know how to live and and we need guidance now there is of course an industry devoted to guidance in this area it's called the self-help industry now being sophisticated and intelligent and cultured people all of you will have steered well clear of anything redolent of the term self-help I mean it's really it's a it's a horror term it's often associated forgive me if there are any Californians in the room with a sort of naive West Coast utopianism that covers a garish the promises are overblown there's a sort of sense of you know you can change your love life in five minutes of the perfect sex life made a million dollars in a yeah et cetera in other words overblown naive sentimental promises designed to cover up a much harder reality now the starting point of the school of life is that actually trying to tell people that life is a perfect business that can be made ideal is one of the quickest ways to depress them the best way to cheer anyone up is to tell them life is difficult for everyone we suffer all of us alone thinking that we are massively unique in our sufferings we're not they're actually what binds us together and being able therefore to say we are a broken species is the first step towards consolation and an act of friendship all religions knew this move I mean think of Buddhism the first tenet of Buddhism is life is suffering well thanks very much it goes and it goes on from there and the grimness of existence far from an ignorant of that grimness being a route to ultimate despair it's actually the birth of compassion towards ourselves and compassion towards our knowing that we are broken creatures as I say is a sort of beginning of a friendship it also makes you a nicer person imagine two people on a dinner date right they do and met each other they don't know each other well and one of them starts saying well I'm pretty perfect and the other one goes I'm pretty perfect too and my job's doing well the other one goes well you know things been going pretty great for me too insufferable a rigid insufferable perfectionism how much nicer it would be if this couple got together and they said how are you crazy I'm crazy in these ways how about your brokenness what's your brokenness look like and they were able to build friendship and and a sense of neutrality precisely on on an acknowledgment of how much in them was not perfect isn't it I should say the goal of life is not the god of emotional life should never be to try and be entirely sane there are no sane people we've done some surveys we've sent out scouts no one is saying on the earth however the best possible kind of sanity you can aim for is what we like to call sane insanity whereby you have what we might call a handle on what's wrong with you there's still something wrong with you because there's something wrong with everybody but you can describe it in eloquent and reassuring terms to those who you live near with and if you don't want to harm too much that is the best that we can do but it's a lot and this is in many ways the goal of the self-help that the school of life dispensed it were uniquely we like to think quietly pre brexit we're quite a English institution in the sense that one of the great exports of this country traditionally was always melancholy and melancholy melancholy is not sadness or despair nor is it rage and or is it bitterness it's it's it's an elegant negotiation with tragedy and I think that that's what we might be able to to aim for um we live in a cruel world and I'll tell you how cruel it is because one of the first questions that we face whenever we meet somebody new is what do you do and according to how you answer that question people are the incredibly pleased to see you or a little bit fearful and just leave you alone by the nuts and you know that you are not going to get the respect the kindness the honor that of us crave because you have not performed well enough in a very fast-moving very competitive capitalist economy and this is hardwired into us with a conscious of it or not we know that's the way it is and the opposite so I should say this um in a way we live in a world of snobs now snobbery is often associated with an old-fashioned English concern with aristocracy with titles dukedoms etc and that the snob is on the lookout for someone with certain lineage and bloodline no one's a snob like that anymore or five people on the planet the dominant form of snobbery nowadays is of course job snobbery and snobbery is any way of judging another human being whereby you take a small and arguably not central part of them and use that to come to a rigid non-negotiable verdict on who they are and so for the snob if you meet a clothes snob for example you can say to them you know my trousers are from the gap that's it you know you could be the nicest person most interesting person finished right and so you know it's now the the opposite of a snob is your mother not necessarily your mother or need my mother but but doesn't what the ideal mother she doesn't care how you're doing how you're performing she cares how you are ideally ideally but most people are not our mothers most people judge very quickly and we feel that judgment is lovely called frightening quote from George Orwell who says after 20 no one cares if you're nice or not and that captures something rather tragic you know nowadays we often hear critics saying that we live in incredibly materialistic times that never before people being so greedy and focused on acquiring money I don't think that we're living in particularly materialistic times I think we're living in times that have for a whole variety of reasons connected up emotional rewards to the possession of material goods it's not ultimately the material goods that we want it's the emotional rewards that we feel rightly that there are conduit to that we're after but we know that we can't get to them without first passing through the gate of material success and that in a way lends a certain point even see to the way in which we pursue material success and the way in which our eagerness for material and status Goods plays itself out I mean look you know to be compassionate the next time you see somebody driving by in a Ferrari don't think this is somebody you know who's very greedy think this is somebody with an unusually intense and very poignant need for love that they're expressing you know through through automotive means um many many features of society nowadays are almost designed to ramp up the tension that we feel all of us feel and that we pick up at the school of life one of those things is the notion that nowadays we live in a meritocracy now meritocracy is one of those words that politicians on left and right of the spectrum are really keen on your view at all saying that the the gold and no varner of their political efforts is to create a more meritocratic world now let's try none pick that word for a moment what do people mean by meritocracy they mean a society where those who deserve certain rewards will get them that merit will lead to certain kinds of success if you're hard-working it doesn't matter who your parents were where you went to school you should be able to get to the top um this sounds fantastic I mean who on earth would ever argue with this idea but there's a very nasty sting in the tail that carries a big psychological burden if you genuinely believe in a world in which those who get to the top deserve to get to the top you'll also be creating logically a world in which those who are at the bottom deserve to be at the bottom in other words a meritocratic worldview turns success but also failure from something that might have been a chance phenomenon to something that is determined and says a huge amount about who you are and this is very different from all other societies most other societies have ascribed what happens to a person over their life at least in part at least half to the intervention of non-human forces let's call them divine we don't have to believe in these divine forces to know that that's what previous societies so if you look at ancient Rome for example so ancient Rome had a cult of the goddess of fortune she was known as Fortuna and they were estimated to have been over 8,000 shrines and statues of Fortuna in public places across Roman Italy and the notion was that if something went right for you in your life or if you had a difficult moment coming up you would immediately go and pray and give an offering to the goddess of fortune because what happened in your endeavor was held to reside at least substantially in the hands of this goddess this goddess was represented in an interesting way she was depicted holding a cornucopia which was filled with the symbols of prosperity and success and worldly glamour so money and fruit and and medals and other such things and then in her other hand she was depicted holding a tiller and this was meant to represent a capacity to change very likely with a light touch of her hand the course of men and women's lives so she was held to be fickle have immense power over us and and distribute her favors slightly willy-nilly as the mood took her so forth the goddess of fortune a central figure we don't believe in fortune anymore we don't believe in luck anymore you pick this up in language you know in medieval English if you came across somebody who had absolutely no financial resources the word that you would use to describe them was an unfortunate literally somebody not blessed by the goddess of fortune unfortunate nowadays taking the United States what you call such a person a loser a bit of a loser and feel the punitive quality of that term loser loser is what you get when a society thinks it's running a race that that race is broadly speaking fair now what does it matter if if if this happens well not believing in luck makes life a lot tougher for example if I said you know I I published this book and it's very very good but unfortunately it's sold no copies but the problem is it's not my problem it's Fortuna the goddess of fortune has somehow not blessed my book but it's really very good you'd go no no that's not true you've done something wrong you would say how can the guy be telling me that he has value and there is no external reward for that value it's hardwired into us that's what it means to live in that period of history that historians call modernity and modernity as an idea as an ideology was thought to have begun at some point in the tail end of the 19th century and one of the first great students of the mentality of modernity was the French sociologist Emile Durkheim and has a fascinating role to play in this story because Durkheim studied many of the differences between agrarian societies and industrial societies in other words societies that live together in villages where most of the money was earned through agriculture where people believed in God and where family kinship clans were very important and he controlled started this with modern societies where people live in cities where money's earned it often in large anonymous factories where people are not connected up with large family groupings but are often isolated in romantic dyads and he contrasted these and maybe lots of fascinating observations but there was one which continues to stick out and in a way haunts the modern imagination and it's this the rate of people killing themselves in modern societies is 20 times as high as that in pre in agrarian societies in other words despite all the advantages in modernity something is a little awry and that something is was very clear to Durkheim which is modern societies ascribe people's biography solely to them you are a success you are a failure not the gods not your family not where you came from doesn't matter about any of that it's how you're performing and because of capitalism in the way it works and the fact that there must always be victims and inefficiencies that are weeded out and this is going to leave a certain number of people every year who cannot face what they've become in the eyes of others their need for respect and for honor is not going to ever be realized and and the only way out is the most tragic way that humans know look in a way a lot of what we do when we try and succeed in life is by the goodwill of other people right that's what we're trying to do we're trying to by the kindness of strangers we're trying to ensure that when we walk in a room people are not ashamed and embarrassed and look the other way we're trying to hope that when when somebody greets us there will be a certain energy to their greeting now here's the good and bad news right for those of you who are on that treadmill and many of us are you know it's a very natural path it doesn't really work it sort of works but actually you know you could be the richest person in Britain if you're obnoxious no one really wants to know you this sort of pay a certain amount of respect but not really ultimately and this is a sort of strange secret um you know the thing that really turns strangers into friends and it sounds very odd because we think it's the opposite right failure vulnerability the display of vulnerability is actually the only route to friendship you cannot become friends with any human being on the planet without showing a bit of yourself which they could use against you which they could use to humiliate you which is in some ways in the eyes of the so-called world embarrassing but that's the beginning of friendship and we almost forget about this I think we know it in our hearts but we forget about it we don't live as though that's true we live as though a shiny glossy thing is going to get us the friendship we need it's not actually it's a root it's a one-way road to isolation I want to put this idea to the test some of you know each other but some of you don't what I want you to do when I give you the signal and not any time before is I want you to turn to somebody maybe that you don't know that you haven't come here with a stranger a stranger and I want you to very briefly introduce yourself shake their hand and then I want you to do a very strange sounding thing I want you to tell them very briefly something you regret something you're ashamed of and something you're sad about something you regret something you're ashamed of and something you're sad about and we've got two minutes for this introduce yourself to a stranger now [Music] okay all right let's set let's come back let's come back into the room you're enjoying this okay um let's let's all come back let's all come back so you know thank you thank you thank you I think we have to stop it there how'd you stop with that guys help me out all right the reason why the reason why this feels good is that so many of us spend so much of the time feeling a bit weird how how many of you feel a bit weird sometimes so so so maybe maybe we've got a week maybe got a room about 150 weird people which-which oh she's quite reassuring because not hungry people can't be weird that statistics are against that a conclusion it's something else is going on the problem is that we know other people only from what they choose to tell us whereas we know ourselves from the inside so we know all the turmoil and the anxiety and the regrets and the shame we know all of that but we know other people only from what they choose to tell us and because of the way that life is set up they're sort of hi how are you doing I'm great how you doing I'm great how you doing I'm gonna kill myself how you doing fantastic um because of that culture we don't get to share enough of our inner lives and we're slowly going mad for no reason at all so if ever you feel lonely isolated vulnerable do the one thing you don't really feel like doing lean into the vulnerability and dare to believe that others are as troubled by this strange business we call life as you are a great source of relief you know we're on the edge of London part of what drives us nuts in the modern world is that we live in cities were connected constantly by social media we know so much about what other human beings are up to their achievements their triumphs their ambitions right it drives us mad all other societies other than our own had bang in the middle something mightier holier greater than human beings something non-human that was venerated and was greater than the king that was greater than all the bishops that was greater than all the noblemen and the aristocracy we've done away with that the only thing at the centre of our societies is other human beings and their triumphs and their great moments no wonder we're driven slightly crazy we need moments of relief one of the things we need more than ever almost without realizing how much we need it is the spectacle of nature not for the business of being healthy though that - it's about being psychologically healthy the great thing about nature is it doesn't care about you it doesn't care about the leadership election and brexit and the finances etc it is a nonhuman world that will endure far after our human show will have ended and it relative eise's us we have such trouble finding perspective in relation to our own troubles that's why we enjoy seeing oceans and glaciers and mighty mountains and hearing Brian Cox and looking up at the stars we need this so badly we need the stars more than they'll ever need us we need we've dogs dogs are fantastic about this the great thing about a dog is it doesn't mind how things are going at the office right all it wants to do is just play with you and you throw it a ball that comes back little children children under 4 a fantastic in this regard as well they don't mind they just care if you're gonna be nice right and and and this is extremely important so being somehow relativized ok and moving on I want to talk about self-knowledge it's a big thing that we talk about here the most central command of ancient philosophy when Socrates was said what's the one thing that everyone needs to know a philosophy he replied rather no mclee know yourself that somehow self-knowledge is at the root of being an enlightened person now I might say well surely we know ourselves because like we're ourselves so surely I know me you know why would you claim to know me because I'm me so surely I know me the weird thing is it's very very hard to achieve self-knowledge if you compared the mind it would be like a gigantic house that was plunged in darkness we don't know most of the rooms most of the rooms are bolted shut often by fear and we're somewhere in operatic in a cupboard with a little torch and that's called consciousness and occasionally will sort of shine the light and try and work out what's what's going on but broadly our grasp of ourselves is incredibly fragile and and tentative largely because or in part because the things that there are to know about us are so scary there's so anxiety inducing and unfortunately we've built a world where we can escape the business of introspection far better than we almost have ever been able to do I mean you can work out a life where you need never ever be alone what's wrong with our phones is not that we're gaming on them with all having fun on them that the problem is they don't allow us enough time with our thoughts I wonder how many of you sleep well you know there's been an epidemic of insomnia and now what is insomnia in my view insomnia is really the minds revenge for all those thoughts that you in inverted commas forgot to have in the day all those thoughts about your regrets and your longings and your shame and your desires and all those things that you carefully plotted not to ever confront are gonna come and get you in the middle of the night so if you really want to sleep think more allow more time for thought in the in the other hours of your life and and other addictions are possible addictions to news to to travel to work a lot of respectable sounding reasons why we need never explore ourselves look most childhoods have gone a bit wrong without anyone meaning for anything bad to happen most of us have a childhood which has been difficult now why on earth am i mentioning childhood at this juncture and some of you in the room might go hang on a minute he's not gonna mention that guy Freud surely we know isn't over I often get asked isn't Freud finished like that wasn't wasn't he discredited it wasn't you know and the bad news and it really really is bad news and I mentioned this is a great fan of Freud the bad news is that guys not going away the insight that he made about human emotional functioning is fundamental and will even if lots of his theories are going to be discredited or improved upon or worked upon the fundamental one which is that the way that we are as adult sits upon a base formed in childhood and that the childhood relationships the central relationships that we had with our caregivers and parental figures that these are the golden key to unlocking our emotional functioning this is not going to go away anytime soon and it's a problem it's humiliating frankly you could be 30 40 50 60 70 and you're asking me to believe that who I was at five is determining so much I'm afraid yes it really is and and the best way is not to try and run away or ridicule or scoff at this notion but to accept it on the chin and do that one thing that will get us out of merely acting out our childhood patterns and our childhood dynamics and that is understanding the more you can understand a dynamic the more you could pull the plug out of it and diffuse it you know what are some of the ways in which childhoods go wrong I'm speaking with my son in the room so block your ears Samuel okay this is one way in which childhoods go wrong you know I'm borrowing heavily here from a psychoanalyst that I'm very fond or with very keen on at the school of life his name was Donald Winnicott he was working at Paddington Green Children's Hospital in the 50s 60s and 70s made amazing progress in basically turning britain from a parent focused parenting model towards a child focused parenting model in other words that a good parent now for the first time sees the child as a human being rather than as an animal that needs to be watered and fed and the notion of being attuned to a child's needs was something Winnicott believed in very much now but he observed something very important and very interesting he argued that in the early years every child has what he called a true self and that true self is fundamentally a social appoints anti-social in other words it's not interested in being good and polite and sweet it may sometimes be good in polite and sweet but not for the sake of being good and polite and sweet it is simply an authentic being trying to figure out the world on its own terms and so sometimes that means that baby will be happy and smiley and sometimes baby will be furious and kicking and biting and wanted to kill and destroy and blow up the whole world it's so furious okay now he also observed that some caregivers cannot tolerate this there may be too depressed to on-edge their own child has might have been too difficult to allow the child that moment of primary immittance and therefore the child quite early on has to do something which is very difficult the child has to become good earlier than it should so suddenly overlaid on the true-self too quickly is layered on what Winnicott called a full self and a full self smiles and a full self does really well at school and it looks as though everything's going terrifically for the full self but it's a full self and beneath is a true self that has not had its say and such is the nature of emotional development that the true self is not going to lie quietly so a large part of the problem that we've got in the modern world is over compliance it may look as though we're living in a world of rebels we're not psychologically psychoanalytically we're often living in a world of very good boys and girls who are nurturing serious mental unwellness beneath their outward competence and and great capacity to please others because good boys and girls know exactly what other people need from them they've been doing this since early childhood they they're experts at reading what somebody walking in the office know wants from them and they know how to get an Ender and that's why they're gonna be very successful but it's difficult and some of what happens and we pick up some of this at the school of life I should say by the way school life is a real institution we're based in blooms where you can walk in they gets like a therapy there it's a center we run classes we've got ten branches around the world it's a real place you can go with your mental unwellness and it's fundamental I believe that there should be places like this many more places where we can take mental challenges now one of the things we often find is people who are having a breakdown now a breakdown is an interesting phenomenon breakdowns are terrifically inconvenient for everyone around the person having a breakdown somebody was a fantastic performer at the office or they were doing really well at university or things were going swimmingly for them and suddenly they're lying in bed they're unable to speak they don't want to eat they're furious they're catatonic they're mumbling incoherently no one knows what to do now the way we like to say it is that a breakdown is very often a prelude to a breakthrough there is something trying to break through and that something can very often be a healthy thing right it's the true self that has not had its say and very inarticulately and very inconveniently because there's the AGM coming up and there's the quarterly reports etc something is bursting through something needs to be heard and we need to give that home and we don't do it enough another psychological dynamic to watch out for psychotherapist talk they work wonderful term for this of the way in which very many of us especially if we don't understand ourselves too much are guilty of what is called transference now transference is an interesting term what it means is that you are transferring from the past ways of behaving and emotions that were suited to a very difficult early the early phenomenon and you're landing these emotions onto a part of adult life that is not actually called for it that doesn't really warrant it and let me give you example some kind of office life so let's imagine you're dealing with someone as you mention you a manager of somebody and you've got a colleague and you call them into your office you say look I really like the report it's fantastic done a really great job the last couple of paragraphs you just need to kind of tweak them because they're not quite right it's not it's not landing properly and they turn around and they go what is it about you why are you always trying to bring me down nothing that I do is ever good enough for you why do I not deserve to be here like everybody else and you want to hang on hang on and quite clearly something is coming up from a place that doesn't belong merely to that office at that point something is being transferred a sense of unworthiness a defensive structure built up probably before the age of five is surging forth 8:35 in the middle of a high-rise office with a legal case pending and and therefore I don't mean that the person's gonna be sued but as it were these a bunch of lawyers trying to figure out a sensible way forward but somehow emotions have got in the way and this is fascinating and poignant and that's why we're never as adult as we like to think that we are and those who are most adult are those who have successfully negotiated a relationship with their childhood self and particularly the more damaged or tricky parts of their childhood selves with all the unusual demands that that will make like I want to talk about love because relationships you know it's been estimated that a person's life satisfaction is dependent up to 60% on the quality of their primary relationship with another another adult very striking statistic if you gave a Martian that statistic if you said how happy humans are is dependent on the quality of their relationship they would immediately deduce that human beings must be spending at least 60 percent of their time leisure time but also work time figuring out the problems of relationships it's not like that at all if you look at the modern economy probably less than 1% of the modern economy is devoted to trying to get relationships working well very peculiar statistic given what things are like for us on the ground as it was we're living our lives and part of the reason for that is a movement of ideas called romanticism which takes hold in well it starts really the tail end of the 18th century and we're still living in what we could call a Romantic Age it starts off in the minds of poets writers and artists and it's now spread everywhere you find romanticism in pop songs in in adverts in everywhere it's permeated modern culture and Romanticism teaches us all sorts of things about relationships there to my mind poisons very often our capacity to have good relationships so we're up against a very unhelpful cultural background let me give you a few of the key ideas of Romanticism so romanticism tells us that everybody everybody has a soulmate and they're going to find them it may take a bit of time bit of heartache etcetera but eventually you'll find a soulmate and when you find your soulmate you will never disagree them with them on anything they will understand everything about you and you everything about them and they will be perfect symmetry and loneliness finally will come to an end that's all made where are you gonna find them you're not going to find them with your parents setting you are poor any kind of rational analysis they're gonna be found by instinct instinct will guide you to the best person to have 50 years of happiness a special feeling it's interesting you're in the 19th century heyday Romantic literature people were always falling in love in trains it trains a very romantic place to do you see a stranger there reading a book and you're reading a book but you're actually spying them and and they have a lovely face and poetic eyes and before you know you've reached your your station you know that this is the person so that's how you find a sensible life partner for for 50 years the other thing is romanticism coincides with the secularization of society so as the hopes and dreams that we previously invested in gaad's starts to AB so some of that energy is redirected towards human beings but we now start to call angel so we say angel' could you get some milk from the fridge and angel how are we going to go out tonight sir but the problem is angels just don't quite measure up to those lovely things painted by Piero della Francesca so we get mad and angels not quite doing what it should but anyway that's an idea of Romanticism also the notion is that when you meet your soul mate and when you find them angelic you're going to live with them forever the whole thing has to be forever if it's real it has to be forever till death do us part anything else is fake and it helped that many of the romantics died quite young so very often they'd meet and they'd fall in love and it a little bit of cough and then she Burke Ulysses would set in and and after three beautiful stupendous months the lover would die and death environmentalism very few romantics had jobs leaving a lot of time to nurture one's feelings and one's emotions go out into nature nature was a great addition and a great catalyst of love particularly waterfalls and the sky at sunset it was designed to foster these these precious emotions and then there's a feature younger people who don't speed block your ears a feature of romanticism which was very distinctive a complete union of sexes in love so whereas for centuries sex it existed in one place in love in another the romantics fused the two sexes becomes the highest expression of love and which sounds lovely until is a bit of adultery which suddenly starts to become not merely a problem but a tragedy so people are constantly killing themselves in 19th century fiction because of adultery it romanticism moves adultery from being as it were a difficulty which is undoubtedly always been to being the greatest tragedy that could ever be be known you'll be telling from my tone that I don't necessarily approve of a lot of these romantic ideas let me pick a whole briefly in just a few of them I mean the notion that you're gonna find your life partner by instinct is clearly mad and I'll tell you why back to Freud back to psychotherapy the way in which we love as adults sits on top of a base formed in childhood when we fall in love we're not falling in love for the first time we are refined in love now the reason why this often goes wrong is that the love that many of us knew in childhood though there was kindness and generosity and playfulness at times there is very often also likely to have been some more problematic dynamics there might have been distance there might have been depression they might have been a certain hostility or cynicism or brittleness whatever it may be and what happens is that in adulthood when we meet various people that we think might be good for us and that our friends might think are good for us we simply don't have that special feeling we don't have the instinct feeling our feelings are quite numb you know you'll get this when imagine you've got a friend and they've been trying to find the right person for ages so you set them up on a date so when somebody's really nice and just seems really kind of sane and solvent and kind or a little bit and then you call them up after the date and you say so how did it go did you like them and their friend goes you probe and you're like you know and they go well and maybe a little not sexy or bit boring but what these are really cover words what the friend is really trying to tell you is I'm afraid that this person you set me up with is simply too healthy to produce in me the sort of dynamics that need to be generated if I'm to feel that I'm in love the person is simply good threatens to be too nice for me in order to generate that special feeling that I need because because and one doesn't know this consciously because at some level love has become associated with forms of suffering that we don't even understand and can't even dqo that's why instant is such a bad idea we need to unpick instinct because so often it's directing us towards a recreation of a problem rather than the recreation of a of a solution other crazy things you know the romantics romantics believe that if you really love somebody you should find every part of them perfect and beautiful this is a very very strange idea I mean you know sometimes incense lovers will go love me for who I am love me for who I really am why don't you love me for who I am what a mad idea I mean who really could expect to be loved for who they no one should be loved for who they are all of us should be educated this is a difference between the ancient Greeks and the romantics the ancient Greeks also made a great play of love but for them love is a classroom love is an arena in which two people can support each other to become the best version of themselves it is not a forum in which to endorse everyone's faults willy-nilly it is a classroom love is a classroom and the point of love is to be able to teach and to learn and that is what makes a so-called good lover the good lover is a good educator okay and also good pupil this could sound very odd I mean imagine if you went home tonight and you said look at listening to this chat the funny name and he's been telling me that love is a classroom and on this basis I've drawn up a list and I'm going to be talking to you tonight for an hour and a half about your faults and tomorrow night you it wouldn't go anywhere because we don't believe very unfortunately okay so many many things are badly understood look the other thing that the romantics have very unhelpfully taught us is that if you are properly in love with somebody and they are properly in love with you they should understand you without the needs to speak that they should simply ensure it and in the early days of love don't get me wrong in the early days of love there are some touching moments you know you just met somebody at 3 weeks in and it's just beautiful you're by the riverbank and you say you know that feeling when autumn comes and there's that smell and they go I know exactly what you mean I've been there before and they just they finish your sentences and from this beautiful beginning a nightmare is born and the nightmare the nightmare is that another person can understand the contents of your mind without using that terribly cumbersome thing called language and this is a real pain is that ofcourse little children have this I mean babies will literally believe that their parents know what's going on in their minds and to some extent good parents have a good shot at guessing what's in them as because it's not gonna be that complicated either they've got the light in their eyes or they're hungry or they're thirsty or they need to go to bed so we can make good guesses of this but as an adult as a complex machine that has special taste and interior decoration in what time to leave for the airport and how you feel about a particular friend you're gonna guess this know you've got it use words unfortunately romanticism has unleashed an epidemic of sulking and what is a sulk a sulk is essentially a pattern of behavior that is set in motion when you believe that someone who loves you should understand you there are things you could explain but you're going to choose not to because you're done with explaining and they're supposed to love you so they're supposed to know so after they've violated your feelings the party let's say by doing something slightly wrong or laughing or whatever you're gonna sit in the car and they're gonna go darling what's wrong and you've got nothing and then this will carry on and you'll talk to the apartment and they'll go come on what's wrong and you do nothing and you'll put yourself into the bathroom and you'll shut the door and and they'll stop knocking at the door and they look please just tell me what I've done wrong and because you're expecting as a good romantic that they will show and understand who you are how you are lonely and what you're like as a human being in your in the finest brain as a parent might understand a child it's not gonna work there is only one way to be understood and that is through the horribly cumbersome business of language okay a few other things I want to talk to you about confidence one of the things that people come to us at the school of life with is the problem of feeling that they don't dare to do something right they don't to tell somebody that they really like that they really like them or to start a business when they really want to start a business or to leave when everyone leaves they're lacking in confidence now what what do you do this is a chronic problem also by the way they often feel like imposters they go like those guys over there they're the real guys but I think I I'm just held together by sellotape I'm I'm not real they're real and I can never be like them now if we were bless bless the west coast if we were a Californian organization we would tell people this we would tell people you're beautiful you're strong you're an amazing human being believe in yourself head out there go for it this is disastrous advice don't go down that road we tell people this when they say and just I'm terrified I've glimpsed this out of the corner of my eye I think I'm an idiot I'm just I think I might be an idiot right and you know their eyes filled with tears and and we say to them something that sounds brutal but is actually totally redemptive and compassionate we say we've got news for you you are an idiot but the good news is we're on a planet of seven billion idiots right we are that the human race is obviously mired in idiocy from beginning to end right we walk into doors we don't understand ourselves we don't start other people we make catastrophic errors we from beginning to end the whole thing is a mess right now once we accept this with a certain grace and indeed humor this is the birth of humor which is one of the most redemptive emotions we can ever have humor towards ourselves and humor towards others right once we can start to accept that of course we're idiots and that the fundamental nature of being human is idiocy you'll just go up and ask the person on a date because well you know you're an idiot and it doesn't matter they're an idiot too and off you go or you might go up and ask somebody if they might be interested in starting a business with you what does it matter life is short we're all idiots so the fundamental notion of confidence built up not through an assumption of a a perfection and our perfectibility but precisely a confidence born of an elegant negotiation with everything that is imperfect in us this seems enormously important look I want to do one more little exercise with you because I think it can be interesting we do a lot of this at school Drive and it can be very helpful you know we're often taught that the primary problem that we have is that we're selfish people right we caused a piece of lamb basses little voice at the back of our heads like you're selfish you're always looking out for yourself etc now this is a hunch but I think it's a very accurate hunch the main problem that most people have is not that they're too selfish most people are not anywhere near to so there are a few outliers who make a lot of noise and we know all about them most of us our problem is another thing we're not selfish enough what I mean by that is we're not very used because we're good boys and girls we're not very used to putting ourselves and our needs and our complaints and our desires centerstage we haven't found that voice to do that and part of the reason sometimes while we're ill and distressed and can't sleep and suffer from anxiety is because we haven't paid enough attention to us we haven't feel being able to feel productively selfish so what I want you to do is again pick a stranger and for a minute or two but no more I want you to complete the following sentence and hear them out as they complete the following sentence with you if I dared to be more selfish I would dot-dot-dot complete that sentence now if I dare to be more selfish I would not go for two minutes okay alright let's come back let's come back together let's come back together thank you so much for that thank you so much thank you so much for that for that exercise and I hope you can continue those conversations outside because after all this is not merely about books this is a festival also of our friendship we've got a little bit of time for some questions so if you've got a question we've got mics as well do put up your hand and share anything ask something we've got some some lovely chance for some questions so go for it yeah anybody on that side that side yes yes hello thank you for you began your talk by describing a scenario where I'm sure very familiar with which is you're at a party and somebody asks you what you do how can I answer that without telling them what I do um well I mean that's a very good question you might tell them what you do but but you might I mean really the sincere bit is I mean there are various replacements and some of them sound corny they may not always be valid etc but I mean really what you want to do is to say something like what are you suffering from what are you where are you alien how how are you sad what are you scared of I mean that's up don't get me wrong there is a real importance for small talk small talk is a very important place you can be talking about the weather and really you're circling your own life the angry sky the intermittent rain these are parts of the internal world not just the external world and so it has its place in in positioning people but quite quickly ultimately what we want is is connection and an encounter with a reality of somebody else's life otherwise you might as well stay home okay yeah I think there's a microphone that might be rushing towards you so hang on this brushing running yeah I can hear me sorry thank you for the lovely talk I was wondering if you could shed some light on what composure is and how one could become more composed well I mean you'll you all guess my answer the way to try and be calm and composed is not to assume an invulnerable stance where somehow it's considered normal to be free of anxiety I think you have to make your peace with how difficult composure will be so I would like to see the ranks of the anxiously composed or the composedly anxious those who know that they would not overcome anxiety fully but have made their peace with that and are not anxious that they are anxious you know so often we beat ourselves up about emotions thinking that they don't belong in us I also think you know if you were to catch me at the train station after this talk you know fighting with my luggage and cursing and being very anxious and ill-tempered you might think all that guy's a real hypocrite he was standing up on stage or telling us he said why sounding things but but that's not what I'm saying I'm saying actually that what we're constantly trying to do is is to live wisely around and with our neurosis rather than trying to escape also you know lovely thing from from Donald Winnicott a lot of parents came to Winnicott very anxious they had small children and they kept saying to him I'm not a good enough parent I'm I'm not you know doing a good job I'm not the parent I wanted to be and he calmed them down with a very useful phrase which has entered common parlance which is no child needs a perfect parent indeed to have a perfect parent is to be on the short road towards psychosis and that the job the job of a parent is to let down a child in a structured way so to gently introduce them to the misery of existence myself my my son Samuel is in the room and he will attest to the fact that I had an overly young age I would say to that I would say to him it's not that I'm a particularly horrible person it's just that you're encountering the horribleness of life via me first but you will later see that this is a general phenomena you just met with it first here and and so broadly speaking what Winnicott was saying is no one needs perfection you just need good enough and and so he came up the phrase they're good enough parent and of course it's not just a good enough parent we need it's good good enough office it's a good enough friend it's the good enough lover it's look enough everything good enough is good enough okay yeah should we not tell our children to be good to be well-behaved how do we deal that apart for your screaming and well six role isn't saying hello to an adult we just ignore that yes that's a very good point and and you know I don't want to you know speak in in in praise of that the noble savage and that and that there should be no rules and boundaries are very important children are very reassured by by a certain degree of opposition to be a child who can do anything that they like is as madness inducing as to be a child who can do nothing that they like because both of those are presenting the child either with an extreme image of its powerlessness or an extreme image of its own nipa Tain's both of which fry the mind so so it's very frightening for a child to not encounter and know one of the best things you can do to a child is disappoint them sometimes firmly and they will be grateful to you eventually by not being mad by not being mad by the fact that you said no but look it's a fine balance I think Winnicott was talking particularly in the very early years and you as I'm sure are a good enough parent you'll sense when actually the child can take it the child can take hearing that they should be little more polite or pull themselves together etc you'll have an instinct and trust that instinct but no of course there is that balance between the true and the false self yeah how should we deal with crushes how should we deal with crushes a crush enjoy it I mean what is a price a crush a crush is a sudden encounter with perfection in another human being you glimpse a face in the library or on the train or the clifden literary festival behind the burger stand and you think there could be nothing wrong with this person there there is a delicacy a kindness and a depth of this person's eyes that just it but tokens of a perfect human being enjoy that but please don't believe it's true there no the secure for love as we know is knowledge get to know them better and part of the problem part of the problem of unrequited love you know the reason why you know you're in love with somebody and you go out in a few days cetera and and and then they say I can never see you again and they run away why is that cruel ultimately that it's cruel because you've denied the person a sense of what you'll really like were you doing the washing-up and when life's got a bit banal etc you've prevented them from seeing aspects of you which would have stopped them being so passionately in love with you so that's a very cruel thing to do so greater knowledge or greater imagination but but let's enjoy why not life is short enjoy the crash I think there was a question there lady with the glasses yes hello and you've mentioned the early caregivers who weren't good enough they weren't able to parent very well and they turned us into good boys and girls maybe they're the parents who let us down in an unstructured way what's the best method of forgiving them when they're dead and you haven't found the right psychotherapists to enable you to make this wrong well well okay that's a very good question I would hazard a guess I would hazard a guess that you're not so much interested in forgiveness and more interested in overcoming the legacy that they've given you so the grille question here I mean part forgiveness I think you forgive this comes naturally once yeah right so when you once you've made peace forgiveness will come so the break which is how do you make peace and I think it is getting a very secure handle on what it is that went wrong now for some of the things some of the it's a very strange thing about our minds we hear the word trauma a lot many of us are walking around with mini traumas in certain areas and by trauma I mean something that cannot be thought of or something that cannot be thought of very easily so it may take a long long time until you're deep into middle-age before you can for the first time see something and and feel it for yourself you may have known you know dad was a bit angry or mum was a little sad or made me feel guilty etcetera but really to re-experience that um that's the work can be the work of decades I think that psychotherapy look I'm going to show by psychotherapy is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century there are many bad therapists out there there are undoubtedly and many of us have had bad psychotherapy but I think the notion of a skilled human being who will listen and interpret your story and play you back to you and see things that because you're traumatize you may be extremely clever um you can't see this is extremely vital that's all you say what about a friend kind of threatened of course a friend cut it just like a friend can't fly the plane you need a trained pilot you know you need a certain degree of training to listen and replay etc so I do very much believe in psychotherapy okay one last question I think we have time for yeah sorry by the way if you want to know more little advertise I'm sorry clippin festival you're so great if I can advertise something we're doing the School of Life next weekend if you want to fly to New York you can hear me whurling on for three and a half days about all of this in a giant and not giant actually quite intimate conference space but it's a it's a giant attempt to take somebody on a journey so lookup school of life calm and then look up New York conference and you can have more of this if you want forgive the advertising pitch back to your question sorry just talking about your your journey yes the replacement of religion why is it not the school of life and death because that's really the big mystery in that explain that's what religion helps us with why you're not the school of life and death school of and death we are we are implicitly you're absolutely right of course a negotiation with death is I mean look you know think of Montagnes famous quote to philosophize is to learn to die our acceptance of our mortality is so central for the buddhists the goal is to die before you die in other words to relinquish certain sorts of unhelpful attachment before death actually comes so it's in everything that we do it's in every it's behind forgiveness you forgive when you realize you're mortal and the other is mortal it's behind compassion knowing that you are we are dealing constantly with other mortal beings if we thought that everybody was immortal my goodness we could afford to be cruel and we could afford to be tough but we're not we've got a very limited run this planet and on that basis we need urgently to forgive ourselves to understand ourselves to feel compassion for ourselves and to extend some of that luxury towards others on that note we have to bring it to an end please come and get a book signed if you like it's been such a pleasure thank you so much different [Music]

Channel: The School of Life

Views: 711,903

Rating: 4.9303079 out of 5

Keywords: the school of life, schooloflife, education, relationships, alain de botton, philosophy, talk, self, improvement, big questions, love, wellness, mindfullness, psychology, how, to, hack, ted talks, emotional education, how to lead a fulfilling life, the secret to happiness, PL-THESCHOOLOFLIFE

Id: W9X7u-MeJz0

Length: 61min 31sec (3691 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 06 2019