One of the important aspects of finding meaning and spirituality in life is learning to accept who we are—without judgement—because sometimes those very traits we are most embarrassed or ashamed about are actually great strengths, in the appropriate environment. And thus, if we can adjust our core beliefs to incorporate a more positive view of ourselves, we can do away with so much time and energy wasted on negative thoughts, or regimes of misguided “self-improvement”, and instead focus our efforts on our spiritual growth.
Sometimes, society can make us feel shame for our personality traits. There is every chance you know how this feels. Perhaps you are naturally shy, or socially awkward, or struggle with anxiety, or are easily distracted, or lack self-confidence, or even just bite your nails. Whatever it is, we are often conditioned to see these traits as limitations or failings when compared to the celebrated archetypes of our time—the go-getting hero, for example, or the self-made entrepreneur, or the attractive athlete, or the popular extrovert, or the high-achieving graduate. The list goes on.
But the human spirit doesn’t work like that. It is a beautiful, intricate universe unto itself, each one its own unique shape—and is ready to flourish and be happy, if just given the opportunity. This was reaffirmed to me recently when I watched, of all things, a video featuring a group of otters. Let me set the scene…
So I’m sitting with my daughters on the sofa, watching a video about three otters living in captivity. A new pool is being installed for them. It will be about waist deep when full, but presently it’s being filled with a hosepipe, and there are only about two inches of water. The human carer allows the creatures to investigate this new installation, and one of the bolder, trailblazing otters—let’s call him Bob—has leapt up the steps of a plastic slide and jumped down into the pool. Bob is splashing about enthusiastically and trying to eat the stream of water gushing from the hosepipe.
Having seen that the pool and hosepipe are safe, a second otter—Sue—decides to join in. Up the slide she goes and down into the shallow pool to join Bob.
A third otter—April—is much more tentative than the first two. She is picked up by its human carer and placed at the top of the slide so that she can look down into the pool. Perhaps she doesn’t like the high walls of the enclosed space, or perhaps the hosepipe looks unpredictable and dangerous. Whatever her perception, this unexpected addition to her environment poses many unknowns, and she clearly seems anxious and deeply reluctant to jump down. She sniffs and looks around at everything that’s unfolding, in a way contrary to the first two otters.
The carer tries to coax the creature to join the others, and April’s mannerisms betray an internal battle as she skirts the edge, back and forth, trying unsuccessfully to summon the will to jump in. Her fellow otters glance up at her every now and then as if to say “Come and join us! What are you waiting for?”
Eventually, the carer picks April up and places her down into the water with the others. Immediately, she panics, and makes a terrific leap to escape the confines of the pool. After a little time, she manages to return to the top of the slide, where she watches on from the sidelines.
Observing the behaviour of the otters was a profound experience for me. Whilst my daughters delighted in watching these cute animals play, I was struck by just how much I empathised with April. Personally, I don’t have any difficulty jumping into pools, but I can certainly identify with that same level of anxiety and sensitivity when it comes to certain situations.
We all have areas of our personality that we are less than happy with. Perhaps we see them as weaknesses or failings. But, in their animalistic innocence, these otters demonstrated to me that qualifying such traits as good or bad—and consequently assigning feelings of shame or guilt—is a cognitive misstep. The idea struck me like a hammer: these otters simply are—they have completely different personalities, different ways of interpreting their environment, and such differences are completely innate. They were indifferent to my own definition of what constitutes “normal” otter behaviour.
In human society, we would celebrate Bob’s bravery and try to fix April’s reticence. In human society, we would coax, encourage, chastise, and make April feel self-conscious about her shyness, her anxiety, her introverted nature. Media, culture, peer pressure and “helpful advice” from friends and family would impart the overwhelming sense that there is something wrong with April. Something sub-par, or less than ideal.
If she were human, perhaps she might seek help or therapy to try and change her disposition. She might try cognitive therapy, or hypnosis or perhaps a psychologist could work through her past to uncover what incidents had damaged her and made her the way she is. She could read self-help books about how to gain self-confidence, or how to tap into her inner warrior. People might tell her to just “man-up” or “grow a pair” or bandy about other derogatory terms.
Ultimately, those who had no problem with jumping into pools might even judge her to be a coward, or lazy, or just not trying hard enough—failing to fully understand that her experience of the world is fundamentally different than theirs.
What is interesting, though, is that all of these societal consequences are qualitative judgements. In actuality, April the otter knows nothing of our social constructs. Neither she nor Bob has no knowledge that they are displaying either preferable or non-preferable behaviour. They are blissfully unaware of the labels assigned to their character traits, and the baggage that comes with them, and thus the behaviour of each otter was simply an honest, unfiltered manifestation of their inherent character.
They were each beautifully different, I had no inclination to label one a success and the other a failure. And in that moment, I felt a weight lift, because I knew I could neither label my own intrinsic traits as faults either. Neither otter were broken, neither were better or worse. They simply were. And if otters can display such a variety of inherent personality, without the addition of blame or guilt, then surely so can we humans.
Indeed, as I watched Bob, Sue and April’s behaviours I imagined how they might play out in different situations in the wild. In some cases, Bob’s boldness in taking risks would pay off. He might discover new, fruitful territory that contained untapped food supplies. Sue, being a follower, would soon join Bob, and eventually, after much hesitation so might April, having first assimilated all the new stimuli—though she would probably be late to the party. In human terms, Bob would be labelled as brave; April, a failure.
However, in a different situation, Bob might find that his boldness lead him into trouble. Perhaps diving into a situation that contained hidden dangers, such as treacherous currents or a camouflaged predator. April, on the other hand, sniffing, listening, looking all around, is attuned to all the strange and new information. Being quiet, attentive, sensitive and keenly observant, she might instinctively pick up on the danger that’s present. That anxiety of hers is borne out of a higher threshold for what she deems safe. And in such cases as this, it would save her life, and also the lives of all the otters like Sue.
So you see, populations of creatures can benefit from having a mixture of bold and sensitive personalities. The bold ones simply have their tolerance for safety dialled all the way down. They are, by definition, less sensitive to the potential threats around them; more willing to take risks—perhaps non-cognizant of the risks. The anxious ones, on the other hand, have their sensitivity dialled up to the maximum. Both have their strengths in different situations.
Let’s return to the world of people. Where the bold can trail-blaze in terms of action and deed, the sensitive can trail-blaze in terms of original thought, emotional intelligence, the arts.
One of the challenges we have in our human society is to rethink our ideas of good and bad, so that all kinds of people, of all natures and personality-types can feel both valued and have the appropriate environments in which they can flourish. In our schools, in our work places, in our institutions. One of the primary factors that contribute to why so many people experience mental health issues is that our inflexible social structures are not inclusive enough of neurodiversity.
One of the dangers we must watch out for is a disproportionate emphasis on a “warrior mentality”. If our culture celebrates the aggressive, warrior hero over everything else—at boardroom level, in politics, around the meeting table, in the play-ground—then we run the risk of listening only to the voices of the bolder, louder sections of society, of rewarding aggression and confrontation. They are more easily heard, after all.
But if we allow the sound of the quieter voices to get drowned out, we risk losing so many rich and valuable contributions. It is no surprise that, over time, people who don’t fit in to the ideal norms have their self-confidence chipped away, by the unthinking feedback they get from their community.
Often, nuance and subtlety are the first victims in public discourse. The irony is that human society is an artificial construct. We can shape it in whatever way we wish, to accommodate all types of person, if we so choose. For example, if humans were half the height we currently are, and half the strength, then naturally, we would design our technology to cater for that. So why then, in today’s world, should our power tools, our seatbelts, our shelf-heights, our pianos be designed for the average male adult to use, with his man’s strength, and stature and hand-span? Why aren’t there also power-tools for women? Pianos that can accommodate a woman’s average hand-span?
Similarly, we should be able to build our institutions and social groups with variety in mind, so that personalities and minds of all types can feel welcome. Millions of people worldwide suffer with excessive stress, anxiety, self-esteem, low confidence or depression, purely because they are being told that they don’t measure up to a fictional ideal. If you are one of those people, then you are not alone. And if the world keeps telling you that there’s something wrong with you, then instead of taking it at face value, try turning that statement on its head and say, rather, there’s something wrong with the world.
The ideas we perpetuate as a society, the turns of phrase, the jokes, memes and digs we make at other people’s expense, they all have a cumulative effect, and impede the wonderful world we could be building for ourselves. Aggression, ultra-competitiveness, exclusivity, self-promotion, and a tough, dog-eat-dog mentality might well have its place in certain environments, but we need to forge new ways that people can integrate and contribute to society so that everyone feels enfranchised.
Our whole society misses out if there persists a culture of making people feel bad about themselves.
From time to time, one of my daughters has a compulsive habit of biting her nails. We’ve tried many tactics to keep her from biting them down to the quick. It would be so easy, through the use of normal language and phraseology, to impart the impression that there is something wrong with her for doing this. And she, herself can sometimes become distressed. She wants to stop, but she cannot, since she does it almost unconsciously, when reading or watching TV. And then summer comes around and we go out picking berries—blaeberries, blackberries, blackcurrants—and it becomes starkly apparent that what appears to be a problem in one environment becomes a great strength in another.
Out in the wild, she is the most tenacious, the most prolific berry-picker. 100,000 years ago, her compulsive streak would have made her the best gatherer in the tribe. When picking berries, she feels at peace, mindful, useful. When the rest of us have long since tired, she is still clambering up hedgerows and into thickets to seek out one more scutch of fruit. And interestingly, once returning home, her nail-biting stops.
So it seems, the problem most definitely does not reside within my daughter, but in the environment she finds herself in. There isn’t anything wrong with her, it’s just that her instincts aren’t being effectively channelled, in our modern, indoor lifestyle. So my challenge is to find ways in which I can reshape our routine that allows my daughter’s tendency to be more of an asset than a hindrance.
So the next time you feel at a low point, the next time you catch yourself having negative thoughts or believing the stinging language people use, remember: very often the problem isn’t with you, it is with your environment, or society at large.
This is a powerful idea, because, even though knowing this won’t necessarily fix anything over night, it removes the added burden of self-loathing. It removes the leaden weight of thinking that there is something wrong with you. You are who you are. You have natural tendencies and an innate spirit that is unique and beautiful. In time, you might be able to make subtle changes to your life, that allow you to flourish in ways you didn’t think possible. All you need to do is shape your world to fit the shape of your person.
Changing your environment may be more practical than changing your nature.
And if your aim is to continue to grow and explore in a spiritual way, then this is an important step to finding peace and meaning in your day-to-day living.
I’ll finish with something my daughter asked when she heard one particularly disagreeable pundit using derogatory terms on the radio. She turned to me and said:
“But Dad, snowflakes are beautiful.”
She made me very proud in that moment. “Exactly!” I replied.
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