Victor Frankl published his widely read Man's Search for Meaning in 1946, a year after he was released from Auschwitz concentration camp. Frankl, an Austrian neurologist/psychiatrist who was imprisoned in four concentration camps during WW II., noticed that, even though the prisoners were captive, they still had the freedom to choose how they would respond to their captors. They could even love them if they chose to. He tried to teach this logotherapy to his fellow prisoners, and those who accepted his advice often became more resilient.
Frankl's theory of freedom of response is more alive today than ever. The ability to keep one's cool during times of stress or conflict, the patience and presence of mind that results in mental and emotional stability is alive and well in the word equanimity. The origin of the word is aequus, meaning equal + animus, meaning mind. From the Latin came French c. 1600 equanimite, evenness of mind, calmness, good will, and kindness. By 1610, the English word equanimity retained the French definitions.
While all of us would prefer responding to every stressful situation with coolness and self-confidence, we too often react to people who know how to push our buttons. You know who they are. The ones with the snarky comments, the ones who get under our skin and give us a rash. And then there are the painful, impossible situations that come when you least expect them. But living our daily lives with equanimity doesn't happen just because we wish it would. It's a process. It doesn't happen quickly, and yet when you don't respond quickly to the jabs life sometimes gives you, you think you're defeated, maybe even less than, and you know where that leads--a serious lack of self-confidence and an often angry, unhappy attitude. If you look at the larger picture, society's treatment of women and youth as well as social media demons can destroy equanimity before it even has a chance.
It can be lonely business trying to figure out who you are and what you're worth. I'm not a psychologist, but as an English teacher I know a bit about literature, and the characters we love often display the equanimity that endears us to them. We wish we could be like them. I'm thinking Atticus Finch may be my forever hero. And let's not forget the ultimate heroic example of equanimity, Jesus of Nazareth.
A popular and well known set of ways to build equanimity in yourself over time comes from Buddha's three teachings on suffering:
1. Stop fighting your difficulty and find ways of dealing with it that help to create that evenness of temper. Don't expect the problem to be solved right away. You usually don't have that kind of control over a situation, so start where you are and be like Frankl: Use your freedom to respond or not respond.
2. Recognize that things change. What is today may not be tomorrow. The difficulties and challenges of life aren't permanent. Be patient.
3. Accept the value of taking baby steps to reach your goal. Baby steps lead to bigger steps and changes. Letting go of what you can't control begins for most of us in a small way until we can build up to letting go more and more.
Most of us lead lives of quiet desperation (thank you, Thoreau), working too hard, worrying too much and reacting too quickly before we've had a chance to think things through and come to the realization that silence might have been the best response. Just breathe. And meditate, visualize and squelch the "fight or flight" syndrome. Take a walk in the woods and tell it to the trees. Write and read daily a gratitude list in your journal. These are just a few of the many ways to get started on your journey to cool presence of mind.
Equanimity can be our saving grace for 2022. No one can deny that we've run the gamut of pain, disappointment, and loss--loss in so many areas of our lives in the last three years, and hope is at an all time low. On Christmas Day in 1957, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a sermon at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. The line that people will never forget can be a tool in our process toward equanimity:
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."
And from the Book of Common Prayer:
"Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light..."
I wish you light, friends.
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