Mental Hygiene and The Happy Mind
Everyone is torn. We all want first rate comforts, exceptional recognition, wealth and health and happiness out of the ordinary. Of these things, it seems we can never get enough. Yet there is also a gnawing urge inside each of us not to stand out too much, not to attract too much attention, to fit in, to be “normal.” So we are deeply and fundamentally conflicted.
To be absolutely frank and honest, in the course of human affairs, normal does not exist. Normal is a mirage, a superstition, a crazy idea. Nobody is normal and no one who achieves any great success in life wants to pass themself off as just reasonably boring and normal. Mediocrity, or being “average,” and being successful just don't go together.
In reality, we are all unique - and it scares the hell out of us. No two of us are alike and we are also fundamentally alone with our minds. We have different shapes and genes and thoughts and feelings and dispositions. And there is no way of averaging these all out to come up with some kind of norm. Even if there were, how could we conform to it?
Mind, “normative behaviour” is an essential precept of the psychiatric industry, an industry that is itself founded upon a few serious delusions and lacks a model for highly individuated behaviors. Rather, the psychiatric industry is based on the premise that people should go about their lives and work in a generally predictable kind of way, not break any laws or challenge any authorities, not raise their voices, and speak when they are spoken to. Many psychiatric drugs merely dull the minds of the eccentric in order to make them conform to the dull rote of daily existence, but this is not happiness and this is not what anyone was born for.
The psychiatric industry is also founded on the incredible idea that mental health is the domain of an elite coterie of specialists, priests of the mind who should hold the rest of us in their thrall. In reality, the real world outside of our burgeoning psychiatric wards, mental health is everyone's business, everybody who has a mind. Everyone needs to learn to contend with their mind, their emotions, their ups and downs.
Yes, for some of us our life's journey may be coloured with more intensity, our habit of self-reflection and self-regulation may be less, much less even, but really everybody is situated somewhere on a continuum. The categories of “sane” and “insane” are not fixed and unchangeable. On a good day, a person once labelled as “neurotic” may be more lucid than a widely respected doctor of the mind who is cranky and having bad day.
There is an art, and it is a fine art, of mental hygiene. What is hygiene? It is everybody's art, all the preventative things we can do, the daily maintenance we can practice, so as not to need a doctor's intervention. In ancient Greek culture, people considered Hygiene and Panacea to be sisters. Where Hygiene was lacking, Panacea would do her best to restore a person's health. And the Greeks believed in no “panaceas” - not as we use the word today.
Mental hygiene requires self-awareness and a discipline of the body and mind together, as mind and body are essentially inseparable. Mental hygiene is based on all the best practices we have learned to keep ourselves happy and vibrant and alive. It includes yoga, t'ai chi, walks in nature, all kinds of exercise, spending time with friends and family, favourite hobbies, great music, good food, healthy environments, meditation, and for some it includes going to their place of worship to pray.
When our mental hygiene is good, our minds are sharp, our imaginations fruitful, and our trust in others well-founded, neither too much nor too little. We sleep well. We wake up refreshed. Our minds are not clogged with worries based in the past or future.
A happy mind is a fear-free mind. It does not fear the future. It embraces the sum of possibilities and hopes for the best.
A happy mind shuns mediocrity because it knows it can do better. It never thinks “I want to be normal” because for it that would be the kiss of death.
A happy mind celebrates life and inspires others to happiness. It is based on self-knowledge, self-trust and self-esteem. It hardens and softens its focus at will. It is balanced, neither driven by destructive ambition nor obsessed by the pain of the past.
A person with a happy mind works hard, but is also content with what they have. They see the good in their enemies and the bad in their friends, and have a smile and a kind word for everyone. A person who practices mental hygiene is happy with themself and happy with the world – and in these stressful times that makes them an extraordinary person indeed.
Copyright 2014 Guru Fatha Singh Khalsa