The Australian meditation teacher Paul Wilson has been labelled "the guru of calm", which seems reasonable given that he's the author of The Calm Technique, Instant Calm, The Little Book Of Calm (famously featured on the sitcom Black Books), The Big Book Of Calm, Calm At Work, Calm Mother, Calm Baby, The Complete Book Of Calm and Calm For Life. Were I to meet him in person, I would be tempted to suggest that, in view of such a hectic publication schedule, it might be time to slow down and smell the roses. However, this would not irritate him. Because he is so calm.
Tranquillity is big business: Wilson – who describes himself as "the only meditation teacher listed in Who's Who" – sits at the pinnacle of an industry of writers, speakers and retreat centres promising (in the words of one such establishment, in California) "a sacred and peaceful environment for healing". So it was refreshing to hear the former Harvard economist and White House advisor Todd Buchholz outline his alternative theory: that calm is the enemy of happiness, and that it's busyness on which we thrive. Railing at the calm advocates he calls "Edenists", Buchholz proposes that striving keeps us neurologically fit: "The people who sit back and relax… those are the people who become truly miserable." Research, he notes, suggests that retirement prompts a reduction in cognitive abilities. "What you really want," he insists, "is to chase your tail, even if you never catch it." His forthcoming book is called Rush: Why You Need And Love The Rat Race.
There's plenty to disagree with here: Buchholz's thesis is a baby-and-bathwater affair, and his fixation on the joys of competition is a free-market fundamentalist's take on happiness. But his viewpoint highlights the fact that there's often something about the ideology of calm that's rather forced – strenuous, even – and therefore hardly calm at all. The most obvious manifestation of this is the effort to make your physical surroundings perfectly tranquil: either you'll fail and grow frustrated, or you'll succeed and find you're still not happy and productive. Arriving at Princeton, the physicist Richard Feynman found he didn't envy the über-geniuses at the university's Institute for Advanced Study, a leafy oasis where they had no obligation but to cogitate: "These poor bastards could now sit and think clearly all by themselves. So they don't get any ideas for a while… a kind of guilt or depression worms inside of you... and nothing happens." In the words of the computer scientist Richard Hamming, "Ideal working conditions are very strange. The ones you want aren't always the best ones for you."
Yet even the more realistic aspiration to remain "calm amid the chaos" of everyday life can turn into a struggle to feel only one category of emotions while suppressing others. We've all run into weirdly affectless people, usually identifying themselves as Buddhist, who seem to be using their commitment to serenity to avoid confronting other psychological issues. Buchholz may overstate how much we "need" frenzied activity. But it's a strange philosophy of wellbeing that would deny us the option of getting swept up in the excitement of it sometimes, and perhaps even knocked off our serene course by it. I always wonder about that stock photo-library image of a woman, cross-legged, meditating on a beach at sunset. She's clearly very calm. But does she ever have any fun?
oliver.burkeman@theguardian.com
twitter.com/oliverburkeman
