To attain happiness and to avoid mood disorders, which should we pursue

The messages of modern society are all too familiar to us: buy more, eat more, sleep more, take more pictures, and care less about the effects of our actions. We are encouraged to maximize pleasure while avoiding anything that inconveniences us. We cloister ourselves with our material goods and social media habits, promoting self-centeredness. This induces a fluctuating happiness in which phases of pleasure and displeasure repeatedly alternate, which can result in various mood disorders and has been linked to decreases in well-being. In this article, we are going to analyze self-centeredness and its consequences and also interpret its role in a variety of mood disorders and various areas of life.

The Self-centeredness / Selflessness Happiness Model (SSHM) is a theoretical model proposed by Dambrun et al. in 2011 [1]. This model represents different sorts of happiness that are dependent upon the self, particularly the structure of the self. They claim that self-centered psychological functioning derives from how someone perceives themselves and the belief that they are powerful, permanent, and independent. This functioning causes fluctuating happiness and afflictive affects which are also the roots of many mood disturbances. This is heavily contrasted by the perception of the self as flexible which leads to selfless psychological functioning and is a crucial factor at attaining more authentic/durable happiness [1].

After proposing this model, Michael Dambrun conducted a study in 2017 that built upon this model. According to this research, self-centered psychological functioning allows individuals to fluctuate between joy and sorrow, a vacillation that results in afflictive affects. Conversely, selfless psychological functioning gives the individual more emotional stability and feeling of harmony with the environment. They tested these hypotheses in two studies consisting of a heterogeneous sample of citizens (n=547). Analyses of these two studies indicate that self-centeredness (measured by egocentrism and materialism) and selflessness (measured by transcendence and connectedness to others) were two different psychological constructs rather than strict oppositional ideas.

In addition to showing the distinct functioning, these analyses also revealed that self-centered functioning is significantly associated with fluctuating happiness that is the root of afflictive affects. However, selflessness is linked to authentic/durable happiness, which is the result of perceiving the self as flexible and harmonious with the environment and universe. These associations are mediated by distinct psychological processes. For self-centeredness, afflictive affects play a crucial role in the correlation with fluctuating happiness in self-centered individuals.

In contrast, selfless individuals attain authentic-durable happiness that is partially mediated by emotional stability and perceiving themselves as harmonious with others and the universe (2). In our view, individuals who are more concerned about their happiness are more susceptible to mood fluctuations and disorders, while individuals who have more significant interest for the happiness of others attain more robust and durable emotions.

These studies also suggest that self-centeredness causes problems in society; as such, we will to analyze the results later.

Fluctuating happiness in the self-centered individual

The idea of the self as a real, permanent entity with its distinct boundaries results in self-centered psychological functioning. Laborit’s [3] study suggests that each organized structure in the form of an entity seeks gratifications that positively reinforce it and avoids things that risk its homeostasis. The hedonic principal is a major ruler in self-centered functioning and is deeply associated with egoism, egocentrism, an exaggerated importance given to the self, and ego inflation (through material possessions, for example) (e.g. Higgins,1997) [4].

The hedonic principle and its associations are also correlated with some personality disorders, particularly narcissistic personality disorder [5]. This principle induces the individual to focus on attaining pleasure and avoiding displeasure. Feelings of temporary happiness, joy, and gratification are the result of impulsive actions for attaining pleasure and avoiding displeasure. However, only the presence or absence of certain stimuli reinforce the individual and only give temporary pleasure and happiness (Wallace & Shapiro, 2006 [6]). The experience of pleasure depends on circumstances, is an unstable condition that may soon become neutral or may be displaced with displeasure. (i.e., hedonic adaptation, e.g., Brickman, Coates & Janoff-Bulman, 1978; Lyubomirsky, 2011 [7]). Focusing on attaining more pleasure and avoiding displeasure lead an individual to recognize and realize the impossibility of attaining valued objects, durable pleasure, and cause them to repeatedly vacillate between pleasure and displeasure and the arising affects such as frustration, nervousness, anger, hostility, or jealousy, all of which damage their well-being and health (e.g., Miller) [8]. Contrarily, altruism, also called selflessness or focusing on others’ happiness, is significantly associated with a higher quality of well-being, health, and longevity [9].

Self-centeredness cause depressive symptomatology

A self-centered lifestyle may cause not only mood disorders but also social problems that also increase the prevalence of different mood disorders. Loneliness is a big problem in contemporary society, though we mostly live in crowded cities adorned with skyscrapers. As the title describes, a study conducted in 2017 shows loneliness and self-centeredness have a reciprocal effect that cause depression and various mood disorders, as well as health and social problems [10].

Loneliness increases not only the motivation to repair or replace deficient social relationships, but also the implicit motivation for self-preservation. John T. Cacioppo et al. reported a cross-lagged analysis of 10 waves of longitudinal data (n=229) on loneliness and self-centeredness (as gauged by Feeney and Collins’s measure of choric self-focus) in a representative sample of middle-aged and other adults. Loneliness increases the implicit motivation for self-preservation, and loneliness in the current year anticipates self-centeredness in the following year beyond what is reasoned by current-year demographic variables, self-centeredness, depressive symptomatology, and overall negative mood and emotions. Their study also revealed that self-centeredness in the current year foretells loneliness in the subsequent year, a reciprocal relationship that could potentially contribute to the maintenance of loneliness [12].

Generation Me and its consequences on human mood

An increase in narcissism with some indicators of increased self-focus in Americans born after 1970 leads authors to describe that generation as “Generation Me” [5, 12]. This narcissism and self-focus are also intimately related to self-centered psychological functioning since both are formed by an exaggerated importance given to the self, ego-inflation, and so on. We think self-centered psychological functioning may also be considered as a part of this dynamic, thus being a member of Generation Me may be one of the major risk factors for narcissistic personality traits and disorder [2, 12].

Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder in which there is a long-term pattern of abnormal behavior characterized by a grandiose self-view, unrealistic sense of entitlement, exaggerated feelings of self-importance, and a lack of understanding of others’ feelings [13, 14]. Narcissists who consider themselves to be superior to others, and also have unrealistic expectations for the future, become angry and aggressive when in trouble, take more resources for themselves and leave less for others, and value money, fame, and image over family, helping others, and community. Though narcissism has some benefits, like public speaking, it has lots of adverse effects on human mood and behavior and comorbidities with psychological disorders [15].

Selfless functioning

The principle of “harmony” has a primary role in the selflessly functioning individual; harmony directs all mental activities (conation, motivation, attention, emotion, cognition, behavior). Harmony and emotional stability are associated with empathy, benevolence, compassion, and deep respect; all of these have a beneficial effect on behavior and a reduction of psychological distress [2]. Many studies have revealed the results of altruism on happiness and health and have consistently found a deep and intimate connection between altruism and current and future health and well-being.

References

1. Dambrun, M., & Ricard, M. (2011). Self-centeredness and selflessness: A theory of self-based psychological functioning and its consequences for happiness. Review of General Psychology, 15 (2), 138-157.
2. Dambrun M. Self-centeredness and selflessness: happiness correlates and mediating psychological processes. Hung T-M, ed. PeerJ. 2017; 5:e3306. doi:10.7717/peerj.3306.
3. Laborit (1979) Laborit H. L’inhibition de l’action: biologie, physiologie, psychologie, sociologie. Edition Masson; Paris: 1979.
4. Higgins (1997) Higgins ET. Beyond pleasure and pain. American Psychologist. 1997; 52:1280–1300. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.52.12.1280. [PubMed] [Cross Ref]
5. Jean M. Twenge The Evidence for Generation Me and Against Generation We Vol 1, Issue 1, pp. 11 – 16,First published date: March-01-20131177/2167696812466548
6. Wallace & Shapiro (2006) Wallace BA, Shapiro SL. Mental balance and well-being: building bridges between Buddhism and Western psychology. American Psychologist. 2006;61:690–701. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.61.7.690. [PubMed] [Cross Ref]
7. Brickman P., Coates D., Janoff-Bulman R. (1978). Lottery winners and accident victims: is happiness relative? J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 36, 917–92710.1037/0022-3514.36.8.917 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]
8. Miller et al. (1996) Miller TQ, Smith TW, Turner CW, Guijarro ML, Hallet AJ. A meta-analytic review of research on hostility and physical health. Psychological Bulletin. 1996;119:322–348. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.119.2.322. [PubMed] [Cross Ref]
9. “altruism (n .)”.Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper. Retrieved 19 September 2014.
10. Cacioppo JT, Chen HY, Cacioppo S. Reciprocal Influences Between Loneliness and Self-Centeredness: A Cross-Lagged Panel Analysis in a Population-Based Sample of African American, Hispanic, and Caucasian Adults. Pers Soc Psychol Bull.2017 Aug;43(8):1125-1135. doi: 10.1177/0146167217705120. Epub 2017 Jun 13.
11. Twenge JM. Generation Me: Why today’s young Americans are more confident, assertive, entitled—And more miserable than ever before. New York: Free Press; 2006.
12. PubMed Caligor, E; Levy, KN; Yeomans, FE (May 2015). “Narcissistic personality disorder: diagnostic and clinical challenges.”. The American Journal of Psychiatry. 172 (5): 415–22. PMID25930131. doi:1176/appi.ajp.2014.14060723
13. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-5(5th ed.). Washington [etc.]: American Psychiatric Publishing. 2013. pp. 645, 669–72.
14. Cai H, Shi Y, Fang X, Luo YLL. Narcissism predicts impulsive buying: phenotypic and genetic evidence. Frontiers in Psychology. 2015;6:881. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00881.
15. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-5(5th ed.). Washington [etc.]: American Psychiatric Publishing. 2013. pp. 645, 669–72.

Biggest extinction in Earth’s history caused by global warming—and how it could happen again

Penn JL et al. Temperature-dependent hypoxia explains biogeography and severity of end-Permian marine mass extinction. Science, December 2018.

Some 252 million years ago, long before dinosaurs, the vast majority of species on Earth were wiped out in the “Great Dying,” the worst mass extinction in our planet’s history. Up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of land animals were killed off during this event. Scientists have been trying to find the cause for this catastrophic event, which marked the end of the Permian period. One study suggested that a type of microbe spouted large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Other studies suggested the event was triggered by a series of volcanic eruptions that released deadly amount of carbon dioxide into the air and led to cataclysmic ocean acidification. A new research study now claims that the Great Dying was primarily as a result of rapidly increasing temperatures. The researchers examined the marine fossil records and simulated the climate conditions to observe the effects of rising temperatures 252 million years ago. Researchers first ran a climate model with Earth’s configuration during the Permian period, when the tropical ocean temperatures at the surface had reached some 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit) higher. The model then reproduced dramatic changes in the oceans; oceans lost about 80 percent of their oxygen and about half the oceans’ seafloor became completely oxygen-free. To investigate the effects of these paleoclimate changes on marine species, the researchers then analyzed the varying oxygen and temperature sensitivities of 61 modern marine species including crustaceans, fish, shellfish, corals and sharks. Their calculations predicted that many marine organisms went extinct under these conditions, especially the organisms that lived far from the tropics were most sensitive to oxygen levels and they were nearly completely wiped out. To test this prediction, researchers analyzed late-Permian fossil distributions from the Paleoceanography Database and confirmed that species far from the equator suffered most during the event. The agreement between the simulations and fossils strongly suggests that climate warming and oxygen loss was a primary cause of the extinction. By 2100, warming in the upper ocean is projected to approach 20 percent of warming in the late Permian, and by the year 2300 it will reach between 35 and 50 percent. This study highlights the potential for a mass extinction arising from a similar mechanism under anthropogenic climate change. It is also a clear warning that Earth is on the path to another devastating mass extinction. According to experts, Earth could already be undergoing a sixth mass extinction that would kill off most animal and plant species. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature predicts that 99.9% of critically endangered species and 67% of endangered species will be lost within the next 100 years.

New target for therapeutic brain stimulation to treat depression found

Rao VR et al. Direct Electrical Stimulation of Lateral Orbitofrontal Cortex Acutely Improves Mood in Individuals with Symptoms of Depression. Current Biology, November 2018.

Researchers have finally found an effective target in the brain for electrical stimulation to improve mood in people suffering from depression. Stimulation of a brain region called the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) reliably produced acute improvement in mood in patients who suffered from depression. In a recent study, researchers studied 25 patients with epilepsy who had electrodes placed in the brain for medical reasons to locate the origin of their seizures. Many of those patients also suffered from depression, which is often comorbid with epilepsy. With the patients’ consent, researchers took advantage of those electrodes to deliver small electrical pulses to areas of the brain thought to be involved in regulating mood. The researchers focused their attention and the electrical stimulation on the OFC, which is a key hub for mood-related circuitry. Moreover, they specifically induced a pattern of activity in brain regions connected to OFC that was similar to patterns seen when patients naturally experienced positive mood states. The researchers applied these stimulation regimes while collecting verbal mood reports and questionnaire scores. Analyses of these reports revealed that unilateral stimulation of the lateral OFC produced acute, dose-dependent mood-state improvement in subjects with moderate-to-severe baseline depression. There is still substantial work remains to be completed before the deep brain stimulation (DBS) treatments could enter routine clinical practice. One major challenge in this study is to see whether stimulation of OFC produces durable improvement in mood over longer periods of time. Biomedical engineers hope to develop a medical device for patients with treatment-resistant mood disorders that can monitor brain activity in OFC and stimulate only when needed to keep that activity within a healthy range. Ultimately, it would be ideal if activity in mood-related brain circuits could be normalized indefinitely without patients needing to do anything.

How screen time can disrupt sleep

Mure LS et al. Sustained Melanopsin Photoresponse Is Supported by Specific Roles of β-Arrestin 1 and 2 in Deactivation and Regeneration of Photopigment. Cell Reports, 2018

For most of us, the time spent staring at screens on computers, phones and tablets adds up to many hours in a day and can often disrupt sleep. In a recent work, researchers now have pinpointed how certain cells in the eye process ambient light and reset our internal clocks, the daily cycles of physiological processes known as the circadian rhythm. When these cells are exposed to artificial light late into the night, our internal clocks can get confused, resulting in a host of health issues. A protein called melanopsin in these light-sensitive cells helps them process ambient light. Prolonged exposure to light causes melanopsin to regenerate and continuous regeneration of melanopsin triggers signals to the brain that inform it about ambient light conditions. The brain then uses this information to regulate sleep, alertness, and consciousness. In this study, the researchers turned on the production of melanopsin in retinal cells in mice and found that some of these cells are able to sustain light responses, but others lose sensitivity. Further investigations found that proteins called beta arrestin-1 and beta arrestin-2 help keep the melanopsin sensitive when exposed to light. One arrestin does its conventional job of arresting the response, and the other helps the melanopsin protein reload its retinal light-sensing co-factor. When these two steps are done in quick succession, the cell appears to respond continuously to light. This research uncovers the mechanisms behind how cells being exposed to artificial light confuses the internal body clock, and the ability to regulate sleep. It is hoped that this discovery could lead to new targets that could counter the impact of artificial light, for example by finding ways to influence melanopsin to reset the internal clock. This could lead to new treatments for insomnia, jet lag, and migraines.

Matter&Beyond: What was your motivation for writing the book, The Heart-Mind Connection?

Well, that book was a collaboration with Dr. Ting who is a Cardiovascular Surgeon and it was actually his idea. He’s a very enlightened surgeon in that he, over the years of training in a practice as a cardiac surgeon, came to realize that the experience of undergoing cardiac surgery certainly taxed the mind and that the interaction of mind and heart was extremely important for outcomes. If you’re a cardiac surgeon and your goal is to improve your patients’ lives it became very clear to Dr. Ting that in order for that to happen cardiac surgeons and cardiologists had to be mindful of the fact that patients needed to be emotionally and cognitively intact, and so he asked me to collaborate on this book, and the book focused on the interaction between mood states and cardiac states.

M&B: What is the nature of this interaction? Does the heart affect the mind or does the mind affect the heart?

It’s bidirectional. There is an interaction or there is a relationship between mood disorders such as depression, anxiety, anger, and hostility and the actual human heart. The connection between those mood disorders and cardiac function is extremely important. But then also if you go into the experience of having heart disease and you were fortunate enough not to have one of those mood disorders, the experience of having cardiac disease will put you at risk for developing mood disorders. So it’s bidirectional. You can start out with heart disease and wind up having your health complicated by mood problems, or you can start out with mood problems and have your health complicated by heart disease. There’s an unholy alliance between depression and anxiety on the one hand and heart disease on the other.

M&B: What happens, let’s say, if you are someone who has a history of a major depressive disorder? What happens to his or her heart?

Major depressive disorder is a condition characterized by certain clear-cut symptoms, and those symptoms include having a depressed mood everyday most of the day for two weeks or more that includes losing pleasure in life, something we call anhedonia, not being able to take pleasure in normal activities that would normally make you happy. Along with that is loss of interest in things, guilt, or feelings of hopelessness, helplessness and worthlessness, loss of energy, loss of concentration, loss of appetite, sometimes even leading to weight loss, not being able to move the way you’re used to. So it’s sometimes you just curl up in bed and this is something we call psychomotor retardation or withdrawal. On the other hand sometimes depression makes you agitated so you can’t sit still and you’re running around sort of ringing your hands and so on. And then the final symptom of major depression is suicidality or morbid thinking. Always focused on death or wanting to die. So that’s the common sort of a cluster of symptoms we see in major depression. Now, say you have no history of heart disease but you suffer from major depressive disorder. You increase your risk of developing heart disease by having this condition of depression. So your risk of having a heart attack for example goes up like 1-1/2 to 2 times what it would be in someone without depression.

M&B: Is it similar with anger and hostility?

Some people believe that if you’re an angry person or a hostile person, that also increases your risk of developing depression. Say you have depression and you unfortunately have a heart attack. If you remain depressed then your risk of having another cardiac event, another minor cardiac infarction or a cardiac arrhythmia would go up three and a half times what it would be if you weren’t depressed. So that means that this connection between the brain and the heart, between depression and cardiac disease are tremendously important in terms of public health. Because those two diseases are causing most of the disability that exists, by the year 2020, the World Health Organization predicts that heart disease will be number one and depression will be number two in the entire world. That includes the developed world, the industrialized countries as well as the developing low income countries around the world. So in terms of the book that we did we thought it was important because these two illnesses, first of all feed off each other and cause a lot of heartache in the population but they also are the most important diseases in public health.

M&B: The heartbeat change is associated with love or certain joy. What is the physiology behind that?

Let me preface it by saying that this is the age old philosophical question which Plato and Aristotle sort of debated. Love is an idea as Plato thought. So, is there sort of an idea of beauty and of love that exists outside of the materialistic world? Are we somehow plugging into that ideal world of love as material organisms? Or does it come as a result, as an epiphenomenon of the material world we’re living? Does it emerge from the biological material world that we’re living? That in a way becomes a philosophical question. As scientists when we see human behavior, there’s something that we do, and it’s called reverse engineering. Let’s look at the behavior or the experience of human love. Where does that come from? Let’s work backwards from human love to try to understand in a biological way where it came from. We are the ultimate mammalian life. We might start a little controversy about that and especially with the all wars that we fight, but be that as it may, we are these high level, high functioning mammals. Our infants are born [in need of] altruism, which means that they are absolutely helpless when they are born. So parenting for the human being is extraordinarily important for the continuity of our species, and so our infants are in total need of care.

M&B: Isn’t this the same for all the animals?

It’s different in reptiles. If you go to Borneo and you study the life of the Komodo dragon, you’ll find out that komodo pups know immediately what they have to do when they plop out of komodo mommy. They have to roll around in their own feces in order to throw mommy off the scent because mommy will look at them as food. So that’s their strategy for avoiding being eaten by mommy. They also know how to climb up trees to get away from mommy. So here the survival strategy of reptiles is not one of attachment; it’s one of separation. All psychiatry is tied up in that simple fact. There would be no psychiatry if we were reptiles. But because we’re mammals, there’s psychiatry because all of the disorders we have are really disorders of a dysfunction in parental and social attachment. Only mammals for example have a part of the brain called the paralimbic cortex. So reptiles have primitive limbic areas, they have hippocampus, they have amygdala, so they show fear, and they act when they’re threatened, etc. They’re outfitted with those structures which allow them to do those simple attachments-attachments to food and to sexual objects etc., but don’t allow them to do social attachments very well, and there’s some reptiles that are better at it than others. Crocodiles, for example. They do a version of taking care of their pups. Birds also take care of their nestlings very well, and crocodiles actually have brains that are more kind of on the bird-like end of the spectrum, allowing them to do a better job as reptiles taking care of their young and having something of a social life. Nothing to the extent that mammals do and you can look at a mammal brain, and you can see where this is taking place. So the anterior cingulate is an area of extreme importance for mammalian behavior.

M&B: This unique mammal feature, the limbic system and the paralimbic system; would you elaborate a little bit more on them?

I had the privilege of meeting back in 1990 Paul McClain, who is a famous neuroscientist who coined the term limbic system. He studied emotional parts of the brain in reptiles and in monkeys and in human beings. He talked about what he called the mammalian behavioral triad. There are three things that mammals do that reptiles don’t do very well. One is that all mammalian infants cry for their mothers in the same way, so every lamb baas for its mother the same way. Every human infant cries for its mother in the same way, that’s called a separation cry, and you can study it. So when you look at rats they have an ultrasonic isolation cry; you can study it, and you can deprive them of relationships and you’ll see the cry. That’s typically mammalian. Another feature is play, so mammals play, and that serves a social binding function. We play sports together; it serves a social binding function. Then the third thing is maternal nurturance which is extremely important, and mammals do that parental nurturance piece pretty well.

M&B: Are there any experiments that may illustrate the role of love?

There are a couple of experiments that Paul did and they are very illustrative. They get us back to a focus on love. So one experiment was to take hamsters and you can ablate, sort of take out the anterior cingulate. When you do, the hamster pup no longer cries for its mother when it’s separated and the hamster mother no longer responds when the hamster pup cries for her. You can also put morphine in that area, and get pretty much the same results. So you could put morphine in the hamster pup’s brain in the anterior cingulated, and the hamster pup will no longer cry for their mother, it distorts that bonding. And you can do that with squirrel monkeys too and you’ll get similar results.

M&B: Do the results apply to human beings as well? Could the use of morphine stop a healthy heart or brain from giving love or responding to love?

One of the real problems that we face in psychiatry is when we run across an addicted mother. What happens to the mother child relationship when the mother is addicted to heroin or to cocaine or to other drugs of abuse? The child gets neglected, the mother no longer responds to the needs of the child. So we see there’s even a reflection of those basic experiments in the human model when we’re talking about maternal-child relationships. So again that’s kind of circumstantial evidence where there’s reverse engineering, and mothers also have this phenomenal hormone, neuropeptide hormone, this again is exclusively mammalian, called oxytocin. So it’s used in pregnant women to get them ready to give birth, and so once a pregnant woman gives birth it’s responsible for milk production and so on. This is another example of this – if we think about maternal love, one of the requirements for maternal love is that there needs to be oxytocin involved. Oxytocin needs to allow that brain to have the experience of being connected and bonded to offspring.

M&B: The relation between the brain and the other organs such as the heart, is it really a top down relation where the brain commands, or is it a bottom-up relation where bodily sensors form the human brain?

What you’re referring to when you bring up this fact that the body sends markers up to the brain, and the brain takes note of that and becomes behaviorally engaged, that is absolutely true, and it’s something that Tony Damasio calls a somatic marker hypothesis of how the brain works. This is also something that William James postulated in the late 1800s-that emotion is a reflection of the body’s activity. Your heart racing or your stomach turning, emotion is secondary, it’s the brain trying to make sense of what the body is going through. What came first, the chicken or the egg, that kind of a problem. The fact is, the organism works as a unity and you need all of its component parts for it to work, and you really can’t tease a part, what came first and what came second.

M&B: From our physiology, it is evident that we are born to love.

It is very spiritual about this kind of understanding of love and connecting it back to the brain. How the heart becomes a reflection of what the brain is about, and also this need we have as human beings for connection. Spirituality really is this need we seem to have as human beings to be connected to something greater than ourselves. So we have this part of our brain, the prefrontal cortex, which allows us to think into the future and when we think into the future, we gain security when we see a future of connectivity, of attachment. That becomes a workable definition of spirituality. So many of us feel connected to a higher power, to God or to nature, but that is also a common reflection of what people refer to as love, and again you can choose to understand its biological origins. The body will be connected up with that whole experience, so your heart will be connected up. If you’re feeling connected to God, or to the scene of an ocean, and you’re feeling connected to the universe, when you’re looking up at the stars, there will be a bodily sensation connected up with that experience, and that will become for you part of what you understand to be spirituality.

‘My Lord!’ he said, ‘Do not leave me solitary in this strange place. Comfort my people, and relieve them. Give us perseverance and strong resolve, and preserve our young ones in faith.’

But the scene outside would not imitate his mood. Feather-soft clouds and sunlight dazzled his eyes like gold and silver lace-work, urging him to an altogether different mood, as if to draw him to somewhere full of lively hope. The barred window of his prison allowed him only a narrow prospect. He scanned through the bars, this way and that, all that he could see. Beyond blocks of houses and shops, a school wall cast a broad shadow across the school yard, leaving only a corner in the light. He watched that bright corner and saw the shadows of little children traversing it, in and out of the light, as if they were playing in a ring, skipping and dancing. Yet, however he tried, he could not see the children themselves. He imagined he heard their voices, the sound of their feet. The words of childhood jingles rushed into his head. How many times children played such games as these, how often chanted the same words, over and over! Rehearsing. But for what celebration were these children practising so diligently? What great festival were they preparing?

Again the mood of the prison came over him. His mind’s eye pictured the children he imagined in the yard. And he watched them age before him, as though on a film screen, frame by frame, through adolescence and youth, through maturity and old age. Some disappeared from the frame before they attained old age. But the greater number remained. He scrutinized the wrinkled faces, the darkened eyes, exhausted flesh sagging upon weak bones, bodies buckled and bent. Here were, how many disappointed hopes? And dreams not realized? How few are capable of the trial of their old age! Some were sunk in pitiful nostalgia, some wretched with remorse for what they had done or not done. Some still trying, in vain, not to know the truth about themselves.

Their death brought to life, in the bitter torments of the grave, memories of the sins and errors they might have avoided in their younger days. Their corpses became skeletons, frame by frame, and their skeletons little heaps of grey dust amid which they lay, helpless, desolated, ashamed.

The old man’s heart brimmed over with the sorrow and suffering his mind pictured to him. Tears flowed as if from fountain deep within him, inwards to his heart, and out through his eyes and down his cheeks. He wept for the anguish of his people, for the wretchedness that they had stored up for themselves.

‘We must of necessity become old. Snow will-.fall on drip heads. Wrinkles will be stamped on our faces and dark rings etched under our eyes. This is so, so that we may recognize that we are old. So that we may be impressed, as our bodies are impressed, with the understanding that our time is limited. Our coming to the grave is a certainty.

Again, the old man looked out of his cell window. His thoughts turned again to ‘his homeland far away, to his people and, most tenderly of all, to the young. (‘O Lord, let their belief be preserved!’ Still the spring-green poplar leaves applauded the bright day and the birds sang and rejoiced. The clouds, likewise, moved briskly on with the winds, unresisting, graceful, content. He thought:

‘Man too is a traveller. His journey’s end is not the grave, but through resurrection, an eternal life. How unresistingly, how lightly the clouds travel, how sweetly the leaves and birds move through their allotted days! Man, only man, carries the burden of his freedom and so may be caught en route, unprepared, malcontent, fretful, offering vain excuses for his delays and deviations.’

He looked out to the school yard. He stood on tiptoe, but as before he could not quite catch sight of the children, only of their shadows playing. Still playing. Still preparing for some great celebration ahead. ‘Rehearse well, little ones! May He who created you, keep you upon His path. May you grow to a youth that is cheerful but never undisciplined. May you mature with a taste for virtue and for the service of others. Thereby you will be prepared for standing the journey you can by no means avoid. You will then travel the roads ahead of you – as, in the old days of the silk trade, the caravans used to go, if wisely stocked with goods acceptable at their journey’s end at a graceful pace and in modest hope of profitable trade..

And when he had prayed this prayer, the old man’s heart was lightened, and he could look out at the spring light on the other side of his window, without fear of ambush by homesickness or by a desire to complain of his imprisonment.