Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

"Why is it so difficult to be happy?" "What is the meaning
of life?" Whether in idleness or frustration, we all mull
over these big questions. Not many dare to provide
answers, and fewer again are equipped to try. But in devoting his life to
answering the first, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced "Me-hi
Chicksent-me-hiee") found that it could not be divorced from the second.
The linking of the two is the essence of his theory of "flow."
At a general level, the author's answer to the first question is surprisingly
obvious: It is difficult to be happy because the universe was
simply not built for our happiness. While religions and mythologies
have been created to provide some security against this fact, firsthand
knowledge cruelly reveals its truth again and again.
Csikszentmihalyi says that it is best to think about the universe in
terms of order and chaos (entropy). That healthy human beings find
order pleasing is a clue to its intrinsic value, and to its role in the
creation of happiness.
The bringing of order to consciousness, "control of the mind," is
therefore the key to happiness. However, what gives us this control?
Happiness and flow
Csikszentmihalyi's research began not by looking at the nature of happiness
per se, but by asking the question: "When are people most
happy?" That is, what exactly are we doing when we feel enjoyment or
fulfillment? Finding this out included buzzing people on a pager at random
points through a week. They were required to write down exactly
what they were doing and the feelings that the activity produced. The
discovery was that the best moments did not happen by chance,
according to the whim of external events, but could reasonably be predicted
to occur when a specific activity was undertaken. The activities
described as being of highest value, which when undertaken banished
worry or thoughts of other things, were dubbed "optimal experiences,"
or simply "flow."
People in a state of flow feel that they are engaged in a creative
unfolding of something larger; athletes call it "being in the zone," mystics
have described it as "ecstasy," and artists term it "rapture." You
and I may recognize our flow experiences as simply those that seem to
make time stand still. The book's best definition of flow comes from the
ancient Taoist scholar Chuang Tzu. In a parable Ting, the esteemed
court butcher of Lord Wen-hui, describes his way of working: "Perception
and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it
wants." You stop thinking and just do.
One of the key distinctions the author makes is between enjoyment
and pleasure. While challenging tasks that require all our attention are
enjoyed, mere pleasure does not have to engage us—it is passive. Television,
drugs, and sleep can all be pleasurable, but involve little conscious
will and therefore do not really assist our growth. The lesson of
optimal experience is that we are genuinely happy when we are in control.
Optimal experience is that which is directed by us and gives us a
sense of mastery. This is why goals are so enjoyable to pursue: They
bring "order in awareness," irrespective of the feeling one may get in
seeing a goal actually achieved. An ordered mind itself is a source of
happiness.
Flow: Complexity and meaning
To avoid meaninglessness, we can either devote our lives to pleasure,
which usually ends in ruin or mental entropy, or sit back on autopilot
and try not to think about all our possible choices in life. This last possibility
amounts to a surrender to whatever happen to be the societal
values of the day, letting ourselves be defined more as a consumer than
as a person.
Csikszentmihalyi finds Freud to be particularly relevant here. Freud's
"id" was a representation of the instinctual drives of the body, while
his "superego" represented the external world to which our sense of
self may be shaped. Freud's third element in consciousness, the ego, is
that part of ourselves that has managed to gain an autonomous sense
of self in spite of our bodily urges or environment. It is here, leaving
behind the animal and the robotic, where humanity is to be found. A
person living within this consciousness is doing so by will, and since
the universe never makes things easy for us, this person must become
increasingly complex (not in terms of confusion but higher order).
Csikszentmihalyi's research established a fascinating point about the
flow experience: After each instance, a person is more than the person
they were before. Each piece of knowledge absorbed, each new refinement
of a skill, enlarges the self and makes it more highly ordered,
forming, in his words, "an increasingly extraordinary individual."
This is why opportunities to create flow can be addictive—life without
them feels static, boring, and meaningless. Happiness and a sense of meaning
can therefore be increased, the author says, simply by doing more of
what we love doing. The question of "the meaning of life" may not be
answered in its most esoteric sense (that is, why does anything exist), but
can be answered at a subjective, personal level: The meaning of life is
whatever is meaningful to me. The experience of flow does not need an
explanation for those who enjoy it; we are simply aware that it gives us
the two things vital to happiness: a sense of purpose and self-knowledge.
A flow-centered culture?
Flow makes you feel more alive, certainly, but it has another, perhaps
surprising effect: The growth in complexity entails both awareness of
your uniqueness simultaneously with renewed understanding of how
you fit into your world and your relationships with other people. Flow
reconnects you to the world as well as making you more unique.
This double effect has tremendous implications for the rejuvenation
of communities and nations. The author suggests that the most successful
nations and societies of the twenty-first century will be those that
make sure people have the maximum opportunities to be involved in
flow-inducing activity. He refers to the inclusion of "the pursuit of happiness"
in the American Declaration of Independence, a far-sighted
aspiration that unfortunately metamorphosed into an expectation that
it is government's role to provide happiness.
Whereas goal seeking (or living for the future) is a major part of
contemporary western culture, a flow-centered culture would restore
the present-centeredness that was the hallmark of hunter-gatherer societies,
freeing us from the clock's tyranny. With increasing prosperity, if
more of the population is engaged in doing what they love, the whole
attitude to time would change. Time would cease to be framed by the
work patterns of an industrial culture, with its sharp divisions between
"work" and "leisure." Instead, time would be determined by individuals'
subjective attitude to the activity in which they are engaged, that is,
whether the activity is flow inducing or not.
It is said that contemporary western and particularly American culture
is youth obsessed, one consequence being the terrible fear of aging.
Yet the pressure of passing time is relieved if you are truly living and
enjoying yourself in the moment, in other words, in a state of flow. As
the German philosopher Nietzsche put it, maturity is "the rediscovery
of the seriousness we had as a child—at play."
Final comments
The flow theory has had an extensive impact since it surfaced in academic
journals 30 years ago because it is a meta-theory, applicable to
pretty well any type of human activity. Csikszentmihalyi relates it to
sex, work, friendship, loneliness, and lifelong learning. Yet flow experiences
cannot be forced on people. As ever, it will be those individuals
who can generate their own flow experiences who will tend to be
happier.
Nietzsche believed that a "will to power" was the root of human
action, but the implication of the flow theory is that a will to order is
what feeds this and other motivations. Any activity that creates an
ordered sense of self provides us with both a sense of meaning and a
degree of happiness. As the possibilities for how we can live our lives
have dramatically opened out, a need has arisen that seemingly takes us
in the opposite direction: the need to create focus, order, and discipline
in how we approach life and what we choose to do in it. The connection
is not obvious, and in drawing attention to it Flow is a justifiably
celebrated work.