When adversity strikes we need a robust set of values and a healthy outlook on life to enable us to cope. Getting angry is not an answer, nor is self-pity. Tenets of Creativism can help, but there are other approaches as well which can be useful.
Some days are good, others are more or less okay, while others still are not just bad – they are absolute shit. Why do we have such days at all, and what can we do about them?
Why our life experience is so mixed
This variation of experience is reflected in views about the whole purpose of the world – the very nature and meaning of existence. Some think the whole thing is chaotic and has been so from the beginning. Others say the world will come to an end one day, regardless of what we do; or, it will rise into some kind of glory, a Paradise or Kingdom of Heaven; or, it’s set on a cyclical path that endlessly repeats itself; or, it’s all just an illusion. If we look to history for clear evidence one way or another, we find conflicting trends. One trend is the move to greater civilization, which is all very encouraging, but another is that “the more things change the more they remain the same.” This is another way of saying our shoes are stuck forever in the same old mud, which is not encouraging.
A healthy outlook on life
In the face of these doubts we need to craft for ourselves a healthy outlook on life. But what does this mean?
Firstly, it means acceptance of reality. This requires a broad and expansive habit of mind and the honesty needed to admit that things are as they are, not what we would like them to be. The ultimate acceptance is the acceptance of the great Mystery underpinning life, but at a more everyday level there are other types of acceptance. There’s acceptance of imperfection, either within ourself or in others we associate with. There’s acceptance of difference: people and things and ideas that are different from us. There’s acceptance of situations that are too big for us to handle, and related to this, situations that might resolve themselves but only over time. How much unnecessary strife we humans draw down upon our heads simply by denying these sorts of realities!
Secondly, a healthy outlook on life is one that is positive, appreciating all the good things we have and acknowledging that there is potential for more. If we truly accept life in its many colours we realize that there is goodness throughout, even though it may be hidden. Indeed, a religious or spiritual disposition will find evidence here of the divine, the holy, but even a secular mindset should also be able to find and embrace all forms of goodness. The ultimate in appreciation is devotion to Providence, or whichever form of divinity we adhere to.
Thirdly, our life is enhanced by a commitment to making things better. When bad days come, we resolve to turn them around. Our life then becomes just a little more bearable, as we fulfil the expectation of the Universe that we will be forever agents of creation and uphold the standards of the gods.
Acceptance of limitations
Part of accepting reality is acknowledging the limits to what we as individuals can ever achieve. This is tricky because we never really know: we either underestimate or overestimate. The French philosopher Voltaire urged us simply to “cultivate our garden”, but the garden may be defined in different ways, according to our own personal situation in life. We find this out as we go along, or we never find it out, because only Providence (that which keeps us going and completes us) really knows its extent. So wisdom, in a practical sense, lies in constantly making these adjustments within our own mind.
Another way of limiting our expectations is to focus on the present rather than life as a whole. In other words we may look for perfect days rather than perfect lives. This is where mindfulness (attention to the present) can enter the picture. Instead of worrying about the future or the past, we can try to make each day a perfect day. (For confirmation of this see Adrian Rosenfeldt’s article on the film Perfect Days, at https://www.abc.net.au/religion/adrian-rosenfeldt-dark-spirituality-wim-wenders-perfect-days/104712718). We can do this if we make each day complete, harmonious, and balanced. Completeness means being open to and accepting all possibilities; being diverse. Harmony means living in friendship with all that is, or all that we come into contact with. Balance means not allowing anything, especially any bad thing, to take over our life.
Constructing our days in this way should lead to happiness of three different kinds. First, it should give us peace and calm through acceptance of life in its fullness, and acceptance of the world. Second, it should give us joy through positive connection with others. Finally, it should give us exhilaration through being able to participate, however modestly, in the ongoing process of creation. We could hardly do better.
Limiting our responses
Limiting our expectations means we work only on a small canvas, so to speak. We cultivate our garden but do so just one day at a time and on our own patch (the perfect days approach). A variant on this theme is focusing our expectations or hopes on just one aspect of our life, e.g. the home.
Limiting our responses starts from the other end, allowing things to happen as they will but, like a Stoic, keeping them in proportion. Taken this way, bad days don’t have to drag us down. We accept that certain things have happened that weigh us down, but equally we assert the power of our minds to simply rise above it all. This is when we realize the extraordinary capacity for self-discipline and resilience we have.
The bottom line quite simply is that we have to make the best of each situation with whatever resources we have at the time. These resources include point of view, which is not only highly personal but also highly variable. We see everything through our own particular frame or set of frames, whether religious or non-religious, short-term or long-term, individual or collective, and so on. This is inevitable yet it is also limiting. Mostly our approach is short-term, responding to situations in real time, here and now, without seeing the long view. Similarly we see things in relation to ourself alone, without generalizing to the whole of society.
But what about horror days?
We can all accept that, as the John Denver song said, some days are diamonds while others are stones. Others still are worse than stones: they are bad to the point of being indescribable. What should happen then when evil or suffering becomes overwhelming?
Horror times being so extreme, we inevitably think in terms of the big picture. On the individual level there is the question of whether we ourselves can survive, and if so, how. Survival may require us to do things that normally we would never consider, like sacrificing or betraying others. We may be tempted to leave our own people, our own community or society or country and save ourselves first. In the process we may take on a new protective shell, a hardness of outlook that we can never lose. Born to optimism we may become ever-after pessimists.
People who suffer unbearably often want to die, and this is reasonable. When overwhelming evil strikes, as in the world now when we are under the thrall of criminals in high places who wield horrific power, what can we do? What should we do? Do we try to block it out? There are many ways in which this can happen. Or do we rank the ills we have to contend with, attending to some, those within our immediate control, but not others?
A related issue is the way we treat wrongdoers. It’s not much use saying we’ll stop wrong from ever happening (though obviously we try), because it’s in our face right now. The bottom-line principle might be supporting ongoing creation through upholding goodness, but what is good? In World War II was good being prayerful, continuing with conventional war on the ground, or bombing the hell out of our enemies, knowing there would be collateral damage? Are we seeking the greatest good for the greatest number? If so, how do we define the concept, for harsh action now may – indeed will - lead to harsh action later? One bomb inevitably breeds others. The issues raised, and the possibilities, are endless.
A lot of this has to do with our overall attitude to others. Does the principle of doing to others as you would have them do to you help? This is the ultimate in equality, which would seem to be a good thing, but is it? This sort of self-sacrifice may have effect only in the long term; Jesus, arguably, is an example.
Conclusion
In real life we don’t normally choose just one or even two of these strategies. Rather they find their way in bits and pieces into our lives. One way or another we limp on, through all the myriad of things that happen to us. The depth and breadth of our commitment to the Divine is our strongest bulwark in this storm, this constant to-and-fro of good days and bad.
Even the most well-balanced of people have days when they are challenged by the ups and downs of life. For some, the very idea of such variability is a problem, let alone the actual experience of the rollercoaster.
The philosophy and theology of Creativism helps with bad days because it is both realistic, being grounded in truth, and optimistic. In the first place it faces squarely the fact that suffering is an inevitable part of existence. The idea of original sin is rejected for it leads only to inherited feelings of guilt which are not helpful. Likewise, the idea that this is all part of God’s plan, whatever that may be, is rejected, for this devalues the role of human beings in the working out of their destinies. Related to this, the idea that there will somehow be a correction after death is rejected, for death realistically has to be regarded as final. And no credence is given to the assumption that suffering today is God’s punishment for mistakes made yesterday. As Job in the Old Testament found, this kind of thinking is way off the mark. Reality is much more complex.
A more enlightened worldview recognises that suffering is actually, in our world at least, a necessary and inevitable part of existence. A world such as ours requires this sort of variation in order to remain dynamic; this is evident in the natural world as much as it is in human society. All things that exist are subject to buffeting of one kind or another. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune spare no one. That said, it has to be conceded that we are subject to forces driven by individual logic as much as anything else, for things we have done or been through have clearly set up a probability of bad outcomes. A socio-economically deprived youth, for example, is often a precursor to crime, as is abuse of alcohol or drugs. Gautama Buddha rightly cautioned us against attachments on the grounds that attachments lead to suffering. Jesus, Mohammed and other religious leaders have all said the same; though behind these warnings is the simple fact that suffering is ingrained in the overall design of the universe.
In short, we can deal better with bad days if we understand these simple truths – these simple facts of life. But bad days can also be managed through sheer common sense. The most obvious approach here is to avoid unnecessary suffering by making oneself a smaller target. The Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire advised that we should limit our ambitions in life, just minding our own business (“cultivating our garden”) and not getting too involved in other affairs. The ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus had a somewhat similar message, recommending that we govern our emotions, especially in bad times, and focus only on the parts we have direct connection with. This is the teaching of Stoicism. Wim Wenders in his 2023 film “Perfect Days” echoes these earlier messages with one of his own, that is, that we live one day at a time as well as we can and don’t get ahead of ourselves.
If the pain of bad days rises into horror, as we see too often in our modern world, the temptation is to jettison all good sense and abandon ourselves to emotion. Providence works in our favour here through the very fact that, like it or not, we are whole human beings made up of reason as well as emotion; this is a fundamental we can’t change. Our reasoning faculties might be perverted by emotion but they are still there, anchoring us in the deeper reality that suffering never lasts forever and that the universe, remarkably, is balanced, even though the balance may be beyond our ability to see. In the words of Alexandre Dumas’s Count of Monte Cristo, “wait and hope.”