ADVENTURE, SOLITUDE AND SIGNATURE STRENGTHS An attempt to look at Robinson Crusoe from a Positive Psychology perspective

 ADVENTURE, SOLITUDE AND SIGNATURE STRENGTHS

An attempt to look at Robinson Crusoe from a Positive Psychology perspective

 

Instead of a spoiler alert, I dare you to read a note on Crusoe, which looks at the famous Solitaire from a different angle.

I have read some months ago a wonderful book of positive psychology- The Happiness Formula, written by an extraordinary German neuroscientist - Stefan Klein. This is translated in Romanian as Formula Fericirii, at Humanitas.

In it, Stefan Klein talks about a very large array of subjects, ranging from the famous Notre Dame nun’s study, to a research made in a community of Italians who lived way longer than their habits predicted. In The Happiness Formula we find Rosa Luxembourg and her shockingly blissful happiness while spending a sentence in…jail. We also have…Robinson Crusoe and his positive psychology approach to being shipwrecked on an island. Robinson made a list with what happened to him, looking at the sad and bright aspects:

-          Negative- I am thrown on this land in the middle of the ocean

-          Positive- I am alive

-          Negative- everybody is dead

-          Positive- except myself!

-          Negative- all my clothes are gone

-          Positive- it’s so hot I do not need any clothes

With this list, Robinson Crusoe does two psychological exercises without which we can’t be sure what would have happened to the sanity of his mind.

First of all, he detached himself somewhat from the tragic aspects of the misfortune which he suffered with the members of his crew. Sonja Lyubomirsky has written about this in her book, The How of Happiness and it is elaborated on, in the chapter on Coping With Adversity and Trauma- Happiness Activity No 6.

Robinson Crusoe boosts his morale by looking at the bright side. Even if alone on an island, he is alive, as opposed to his comrades. There are no clothes left, but hey…he does not need them. I will file this under the chapter on Gratitude. Doctor Martin Seligman, Professor Tal Ben-Shahar from Harvard and many others have written about the importance of gratitude.

There is an astonishing amount of research that proves the huge impact that gratitude makes on the life satisfaction of people who express it- be it in the form of a letter, daily exercises.

Without knowing about all this, the lonely man made his life better by writing down The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

This brings me to the last positive psychology connection that I made while reading again Robinson Crusoe- the extreme danger of Solitude.

Isolation is terrible for our psychological well being. So much so that soon there will be signs advertising it. No smoking is already kind of obsolete- all that needed to know that already do, and those who choose to ignore the warning and smoke will do so indifferent to the size of the campaign. We could put signs all over the sky and it would be all to no good.

But few people know that Isolation is Twice as Dangerous as smoking. People who live like Robinson are at tremendous risk of dying, no matter how (mistakenly) appealing the adventure of escaping from it all on an island seems when we are stuck in traffic, or endure the ordeal of the urban jungle.

We are all much better off in society, than outside it. As social animals we would not resist on an island. Crusoe is the outlier, the exception.  

It is true that people showed up. The first he saw however were…cannibals.

Robinson has been with me for a large part of my life…he still recalls memories, look – I have read an adaptation of the book for the nth time…n may be just three, come to think of it. The last time I read it, the other day- I skipped through parts of it as they seemed boring. Oh how we age- this was the most adventurous, fascinating story ever when I was a teenager and now it has lost much, if not most of its appeal.

Some of the events, even a song from one of the movie inspired by the book – have been inscribed with a hot iron in my memory;

-          We are going to fly

-          To the island of Friday

-          Like the eagle…

The film was called Man Friday, as it places more emphasizes on the partner- slave. Peter O’Toole the magnificent was playing Robinson Crusoe.

This goes to prove that even reading again a book destined for a younger generation, there still are some useful conclusions to be drawn.