YOUR Personal Happiness Plan!!
by NIH staff life coach, Day Odato
I'm sure you're quite tired of being told that this is an Information Age, but would you be so tired if I were to tell you that understanding the Information Age is the key to achieving personal happiness and success? I thought not. Okay, understanding the Information Age is the key to achieving personal happiness and success. If you keep reading I'll tell you why.
The essential characteristic of the Information Age is that the information for which it is named is not distributed according to any practical strategy, but willy-nilly. For example, the newscast I have just finished watching featured film of a bear attacking a discarded stove. This was information that I did not need to have. Even if I were planning to discard my stove outside, I would have to import bears and set them loose in the neighbourhood to obtain any benefit from a knowledge of what bears do to discarded stoves.
We're just overwhelmed with information. For example, a look at a couple of today's Toronto newspapers provides us with the following nuggets: if Alfred Hitchcock hadn't died, he would have turned 100 today; a lake in British Columbia has been closed to swimmers because there are schistosome parasites in the water; electromagnetic fields from anti-theft systems in stores can "in rare instances" interfere with defibrillators.
None of this information is useful to me. Since Mr. Hitchcock is dead, I don't need to run out and get him a birthday card. I am unlikely to be travelling this weekend from Toronto to Fort St. John, B. C, with the intention of taking a dip in Charlie Lake. I own neither an anti-theft system nor a defibrillator.
Much of this constant barrage of information simply goes in one ear and out the other (does anyone remember all of that personal information about Mike Myers that bombarded us not so long ago?) but the problem is that unfortunately some of it goes in one ear and doesn't come out. It stays with us. We acquire information. We learn things. We come to know more about things.
One of the few things I have learned with age is that the more you know about something, the less likely you are to be satisfied with it. The history of my experience with music illustrates this generalization perfectly.
For example, I can recall as an adolescent in the 1960s being very impressed by the Rolling Stones. However, since I grew up in Western Ontario, hotbed of rhythm and blues appreciation (I am not being sarcastic), it didn't take long for people to direct me to the original recordings which the Rolling Stones were covering (I use the term covering because they certainly weren't copying them - their version of Irma Thomas's "Time is On My Side", for example, is simply a travesty). Anyway, I learned of music that appealed to me more than the Rolling Stones' music.
I listened to the music that appealed to me more. Having learned that there was an enormous amount of music recorded and performed in the world, I went searching for more with the intention of finding music that was even more appealing. I listened to blues, jazz, concert music (and used the snob term concert music for it), and pretty well any other type of music that I heard of. I became, for example, an admirer of the musical stylings of Chaba Zahaouania.
You might argue that my increased knowledge of music had actually increased my satisfaction. However, it also meant that a lot of the music I had previously enjoyed came to seem jejune and inexpert. At the same time, those of my contemporaries who had not become acquainted with superior music were still able to enjoy inferior music. Since inferior music is more widely available than superior music, what I lost by knowing more about music is obvious.
One of the ways I misspent my youth was working fourteen-hour shifts as a stockboy in a clothing store. The store had Muzak, and the program repeated hourly, day after day after day. Once, driven near desperation by the ninth or tenth repetition that day of a bouncy orchestral version of "Dream Lover," I started to blurt out my desperation to the manager. However, before I could say more than "That music -" he replied enthusiastically "Yes, isn't it wonderful!" Now, which of us do you think had the evolutionary advantage?
Unfortunately I did not understand that I was on the wrong track while my manager was on the right one. I had fallen prey to those two great evils, hedonism and vanity. Yes, the music I liked made me feel better than the music I had used to like, but the same argument could be said of codeine as a replacement for aspirin, or of heroin as a replacement for codeine. Any benefits of this improvement in my musical taste were probably outweighed by the disadvantages. The vanity arose out of the justification of my hedonism. Rather than just admit that I found Muddy Waters' "Sail On" more pleasant to listen to than Chicago's "25 or 6 to 4", I justified my preference as a sign of superior musical taste and knowledge.
Hedonism and vanity cannot be satisfied. The hedonist becomes jaded with the pleasure he gets from his pursuits, and seeks pursuits which offer more pleasure more of the time. The vain person eventually devises a conception of himself as so perfect and infallible that any contact with the unco-operative world will pose a threat to it. With music I reached the point that almost all the music I heard annoyed me. Scenes ensued when I was forced to stay in places in which adult contemporary radio stations were being played.
My idea of good music eventually became restricted to works performed by Etta James or the Stanley Brothers, or composed by Guillaume de Machaut. Think how much happier I would have been if I had restricted my learning about music to the tiniest bit possible. I would have been able to listen to the radio! I would have been lining up happily to shell out an enormous sum to attend concerts by the Rolling Stones! I'd have been able to listen to Céline Dion without immediately fleeing the vicinity!
No, my friends, too much information is bad for you, and it doesn't take a lot of information to be too much. Obviously you need some information just to survive - you need to know your name, for example, and where you live, but on the whole the wonders of modern technology have freed the citizen from the need to know very much. Giant databases maintained by highly skilled technical staff store knowledge that we can extract when we need it, so there's no need for us to know most things. Because you no longer need to know that information, you won't be developing information addiction and the constant disappointments and unsatisfied cravings which characterize it and destroy your peace of mind.
To be happy, we must uninform ourselves. Start by refusing to look at the newspapers. When the news comes on the television, change the channel. When anything informative comes on the television, change the channel. In fact, put the music channel on and never change the channel again - you'll then be fully protected against televised information.
As the days go by you'll find yourself shunning unnecessary information automatically. But what about all that useless information you've already acquired? You've probably already acquired too much knowledge already! What can you do about that?
Well, friends, you can depend on the wonders of retroactive inhibition. Retroactive inhibition occurs when new learning eliminates old. For example, if you move and change your telephone number, constant use of your new telephone number eventually drives the old one from your memory.
How can we make use of this phenomenon to help us lead happier, healthier lives? It's simple - just unlearn the things you know. For example, ask any Canadian who the first prime minister of Canada was. He or she doesn't even have to think before giving the name of Sir John A. Macdonald. But what benefit does he or she get out of knowing that? For most of us, the answer is...nothing! Has knowing who the first prime minister of Canada was ever made the slightest practical difference to your life? These days, even if you're a historian the answer is No.
So start unlearning this fact. Every day, give yourself a test. Ask yourself, Who was the first prime minister of Canada? And every day come up with a different answer - Mel Lastman, D'Arcy McGee, Ned Hanlan, Wilfrid Laurier (see? - already I've almost forgotten that Laurier was a knight, too!). This technique will also help you lose your knowledge of who these other people you also never needed to know about are. Of course, it's best to try to unlearn many facts at a time. That way you become more confused, and the wastefully complex infrastructure of your memory collapses under its own weight, freeing you from the tyranny of information and ushering you into a bright new world of happiness and satisfaction!
And now, while you're setting off eagerly on that journey toward contentment and enlightenment, I'm going to listen to Cher singing "Believe".
YOUR Personal Happiness Plan!! © John FitzGerald, 1999
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