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TOalmost everyone knows it the first line of Herman Melville’s 1851 masterpiece Moby Dick: “Call me Ishmael.” Fewer people may remember what comes next, which might be some of the best advice ever given to chase away a little depression:

Melville’s narrator was apparently a 19th-century whaler, whose cure for what he called “hypos” was to take to the high seas and forget his troubles. Whaling wasn’t exactly curling up with a cup of hot chocolate and a comfort dog; It was brutal, exhausting, and dangerous work (just read the rest of the novel for a comprehensive description of it).

So Ishmael’s prescription might seem like contradictory advice in today’s era of self-care. But Melville perhaps knew something we’ve forgotten: when life gets you down, the answer is not more comfort but less. If you are worried about your own case of hypoglycemia, the remedy can be a difficult challenge.

From the June 1948 issue: W. Somerset Maugham in Moby Dick

YoIn 2017, an academic at Murdoch University in Australia proposed a provocative hypothesis about why materially comfortable humans would nevertheless be attracted to difficult and even dangerous tasks. The researcher started from the observation that the universe is both life-giving and mortal and, therefore, from the beginning, humans needed to accept risk to prosper. This characteristic, possibly encoded in the genome since then, may manifest in humans as a tendency to adopt risky heroic behaviors and admire them in their peers.

This genetic inheritance is reinforced by culture, which is why heroic adventure is the basis of almost all mythologies. This was Joseph Campbell’s famous conclusion in his 1949 study on archetypes: The hero with a thousand faces. In it, Campbell, who was a literature professor, expounded the structure of the “monomyth,” which provides the underlying architecture of a millennia-spanning narrative tradition commonly known as the “hero’s journey,” such as the story of King David of the Old Testament and that of George Lucas. star wars series.

This ur-myth begins with a call to adventure, progresses through a series of difficult trials and dangerous obstacles, and finally ends in triumph. The psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who, among other thingspopularized the concept of archetypes, he saw that for anyone, following some metaphorical form of the hero’s journey could be essential to finding satisfaction in life. “Only he who has risked fighting the dragon and is not defeated by it wins the treasure,” he said. wrote.

In fact, evidence from modern researchers suggests that framing one’s life as this kind of pursuit, even when difficult or unwanted, can lead to positive transformation. In a 2023 experiment, academics asked participants to reframe their lives as following the steps of the hero’s journey. the researchers found that doing so increased his subjects’ sense of purpose; It also made a difficult task more meaningful to them and improved their resilience to problems.

But beyond simply rewriting your life story to be more of a hero’s journey, starting a real one in the form of a volunteer challenge or adventure can bring big immediate happiness benefits. Consider a 2013 study discovery that experienced climbers tend to gain unusual spiritual inspiration, experience a greater sense of flowand, in general, they feel happier when they climb mountains. A 2023 meta-analysis of outdoor adventure research presented that participants in these experiences benefited in at least one of four ways: physical and mental balance, personal development, community, and immersion and transformation.

Arthur C. Brooks: Jung’s Five Pillars of a Good Life

A challenging adventure does not have to be physical in nature to provide benefits; It can also be mental. In fact, learning new things in a spirit of curiosity and exploration has been shown to induce positive moods. This raises an interesting paradox This appears in this field of happiness research: people get much more happiness from high-skill activities that require learning than from low-skill activities that don’t, but we usually settle for the latter. In other words, you’ll probably be much happier reading about philosophy or science than simply browsing social media; So why are you still browsing? The obvious answer is that it requires much less learning effort and mental concentration, and although the happiness benefits of reading Cicero will probably be greater, they are deferred and seem abstract compared to the instant, although largely illusory, gratification of sitting on the couch. watching videos on your phone.

Just as challenging physical and mental adventures increase happiness, their absence can harm well-being. This is a common theme that has emerged from analysis of the deterioration of mental health during the confinements due to the coronavirus pandemic, when people suffered from a lack of external stimuli and new experiences. Those who performed best during this period tended to be people with an “adventure-based mindset,” who deliberately sought out new, interesting and challenging things to see and do.

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Yoif you find yourself A little “grim in the mouth” like Ismael, you don’t necessarily have to risk your life chasing an angry sperm whale around the world. But you don’t have to accommodate your melancholy either. I can suggest two approaches that you can employ right away to manage your hypoglycemias.

The first strategy is to use that narrative resource of the hero’s journey to reframe his difficulties. This can be especially powerful if you have recently gone through an event or hardship that you are still struggling to recover from. Say, for example, you went through a bad breakup that you didn’t initiate. This experience is very easy to frame as a humiliating defeat or proof of failure. It’s nothing like that if you can think of it this way: that your breakup shook you out of a complacent reverie with unwanted evidence that you weren’t actually in the right relationship.

That understanding is, in fact, your call to adventure, according to Campbell. Now, faced with this truth, you can embark on the second stage of your journey: learning to overcome emotional obstacles and grow stronger through pain. The biggest stage is ahead, when willpower you emerge triumphant, more confident, more emotionally intelligent, more self-aware, ready to love again and be happier, on your own terms.

The second strategy, if your life just feels dull and gray, is to look for a challenge that is worthwhile, difficult, and maybe even scary. If you feel too comfortable spending time on a job that doesn’t inspire you, perhaps you should announce (at least to yourself) your intention to quit and start looking for work. If the information you carry in your head has become outdated, maybe it’s time to go back to studying in a new field. For a physical challenge, sign up for a half marathon in six months or (my personal favorite) aim to walk a few hundred miles. If your earthly existence is becoming tedious, go in search of metaphysical truths. And if this surprises the people around you who always took you for someone without a spiritual bone in your body, so much the better.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that any adventure you choose will turn out as you expect. And that’s the point. If it were safe, it would not be heroic; If it were predictable, it wouldn’t be an adventure. Even if your heroic deeds turn out to be more uncomfortable or painful than you expected, that’s also part of your journey. The goal is not to win in a conventional way; It is waking up and being fully alive. If it’s the first time in a long time, it should be comforting.

From the November 1956 issue: Ishmael and Ahab

ohlast point about the adventure you could seek: A common mistake is not to be Ishmael but to be Captain Ahab. Ahab, the doomed captain of the Pequod, the whaling ship whose crew Ishmael joined, was singularly consumed with finding and killing Moby Dick, the great white whale. The days leading up to Ahab’s fateful encounter with the great whale were a fever dream focused singularly on the object of his obsession. This turns Melville’s story into an inverted myth: the journey of an antihero that began with a plan born of hatred and revenge, that brought tribulations from which Ahab learned nothing, and that ended tragically in a way that allowed no return.

Your adventure must have a goal, it’s true, but it’s called a hero’s journey for a reason. Happiness does not come from the moment of victory, but from the long journey of living, learning and loving. That’s the best cure for a wet, rainy November in your soul.