How do we deal with extreme change

It’s a pertinent question as Arctic conditions grip Britain.  And as we enter a New Year that’s guaranteed to bring its further share of surprises.

For whatever our desire for control in our lives, one thing that life guarantees us is its fundamental unpredictability.

D.H. Lawrence wrote that every year we pass a personal anniversary unaware: the anniversary of our own death.  Our death may seem a distant prospect but life’s unpredictability forces on us a series of “small deaths” long before our ultimate demise. 

Dealing with extreme change – whether it’s life-threatening weather, redundancy, relationship breakdown, bankruptcy, illness or bereavement – is a subject about which philosophy and the burgeoning science of survival has much to teach us.

How any of us react in a life-threatening situation offers critical pointers as to how we can better negotiate change in our everyday lives.  With extreme weather, we tend to attack the state, lamenting its shortage of gritters and the tendency of the railway system to collapse at the first flurry of snow.

When it comes to the question of personal survival in fast-changing times, such finger-pointing proves pointless.  Surviving change is a test of our sense of purpose, character, humour, and our ability to adapt. 

Analysts of disasters describe a structured pattern of behaviour that most of us exhibit in extreme circumstances.  One key stage in this pattern is denial – denial that that fire alarm means anything, denial that anything catastrophic could happen to me, denial of the new environment (or weather conditions) in which we might find ourselves.  Confronting change is firstly about coming out of denial and accepting where we find ourselves – even if it is somewhere that makes us feel literally or psychologically “lost in the woods”.

Consider three other areas of human selfhood critical to our riding extreme change:

Character

Captain Scott noted in a letter how the Antarctic weeded out those with inner personal resilience and those without it.  He noted that this was not necessarily anything to do with external personality.  The person who was the life and soul of the party could disintegrate under stress.  Scott wrote: “The outward show is nothing;  it is the inward purpose that counts.  So the ‘Gods’ dwindle and the humble supplant them.  Pretence is useless”.

When a person lives for themselves, they tend to become disorientated in a profoundly new environment.  On the other hand, those people who have a personal ideal, whether it be based on a religious, intellectual, military or even political set of beliefs, seem to manage more capably.  It matters little what worldview that idea is drawn from.  It is the idea itself in which their identities and values are rooted and from which they draw strength.

Humour

Humour is a mental weapon which enables us to retain perspective when we are sorely challenged.  As a prisoner-of-war in Korea, Major Gene Lam and his fellow inmates would steal anything they could from their Korean captors.  When they found a 50-foot long pole designed for use as a flagpole lying on the ground, the inmates stole it, cut it up and burned it.  It mattered little that one POW got 30 days solitary.  The prank raised morale and asserted the inmates’ control over at least one aspect of their situation.  Deliberately ignoring the seriousness of one’s situation can create a new level of mental flexibility and freedom.

Adaptation

One one occasion, Coleridge got stranded while scaling a peak in the Lake District.  The situation was life-threatening.  Yet far from panicking, he threw himself on his back and contemplated the sky for a period of time.  Distracting himself, he was then able to notice a previously unseen escape route from his predicament.  By accepting his environment and not trying to fight it, he found the key to his safety.  The science of survival shows we too often we fight life-threatening situations and try to work off old mental maps that we carry from past experience.  Coleridge’s example shows us that when life throws us a curved ball, we are better off accepting our new circumstances or environment and befriending them.

All of us will face extreme change at some point in our lives.

Philosophy, creative artists, and survival psychologists have important lessons to offer us about how to prepare for life’s unpredictability.

This blog is by Mark Brickman. Mark will lead our Survival Workshop: Surviving Everyday Life on Saturday 23 January. For more information click here.