The Inextinguishable Capacity to Flourish

12 May 2021

People in recovery are concerned about life after the pandemic.  Some are worried their sobriety won’t make it through, others that the reignition of “real life” will lead to a lapse or relapse into addictive behaviours. 

On a recent Saturday morning, two articles sat side-by-side on page two of the front section of my national newspaper.  One article outlined the mental health dangers of this pandemic.  The other described a social media phenomenon in which Jonathan Frostick, a middle-aged UK-based business executive, described his reactions to his own heart attack.  He posted this on Linked In, from his hospital bed, and it received over a quarter of a million likes and over 10,000 comments.

Samantha Pope, the author of the pandemic story, has performed a public service by identifying “languishing” as a typical response to the pandemic.  Citing Adam Grant, Rebecca Soffer, and Corey Keyes, Pope’s article memorably describes pandemic life as feeling “…like a plant drooping in a pot: devoid of water, withered and weak.” 

In the article, Dr. Keyes stated that “Hopefully we remember something really good was taken away from us under these circumstances: that was the ability to flourish.”  I disagree with this statement.  This is why.

From the blog of 20 January 2021: It’s hard to argue with a man who, during a three-year imprisonment in a Nazi death camp, insisted that we choose our status as victims.  That man was the Austrian psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) the founder of logotherapy.  At the core of his philosophy of survival was meaning.  Meaning is tied to purpose, a reason one rises (with intent) from bed each day. 

Logotherapy’s most fundamental tenet will be recognized by regular readers: “No matter the circumstance, you always have the last of the human freedoms: to choose your attitude.”  How many attitudes can there be?  Fundamentally, only three: positive, neutral, or negative.  And according to Frankl, we choose one of those three by default or conscious action.  Which have you used to select your attitudes? 

If Frankl, while imprisoned by the Nazis, expected himself to adopt a renewed attitude toward life in a concentration camp, what ought we expect of ourselves during a pandemic?  I question profoundly Keyes’ assertion that our ability to flourish has—or even can—be taken from us. 

In the final paragraph of his latest book, philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (2016), stated that “To live well is to act so as to move toward achieving the best goods [values] of which one is capable and so as to become the kind of agent capable of achieving those goals.”  MacIntyre is making two assertions: 1) Living well is acting with intentional direction toward achieving your highest values and, 2) becoming such a person is a project one chooses to (or not to) sustain.  If you accept these assertions as true, logic dictates that you reject Keyes’ premise that the ability to flourish can be removed from you—involuntarily.

The difference appears to be externals versus internals.  MacIntyre is writing about love, beauty, justice, truth, self-control, a charitable disposition—big, character-based values—while Keyes is probably thinking of our ability to socialize and move about freely in this wonderful world that Nature and humanity has created.  Bu... if Frankl and others can refuse to see themselves as victims in Auschwitz, can we maintain self-respect while accepting victim status in a pandemic? 

The key, of course, is in the last word, two paragraphs north: voluntary.  The way we can “succeed” at forfeiting our ability to flourish is by throwing in the towel.  In terms of addiction, this means lapsing or relapsing as a barefaced act of giving up.  It happens.  And to the point made by Keyes and Pope, the probability of it happening is certainly greater during a pandemic.  But it is not a capacity being removed from you, it is a choice.

Which brings us back to Mr. Frostick.  “Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe, his chest felt tight, and his ears were popping.  He was having a heart attack.  ’I didn’t get a flash of light,’ he said...’Instead I had: 1. F—k I needed to meet with my manager tomorrow, this isn’t convenient; 2. How do I secure the funding for X (work stuff); 3. S—t I haven’t updated my will; 4. I hope my wife doesn’t find me dead.’ […He] resolved to change the way he was living and working.  […]  Frostick said he doesn’t blame his employers for what happened to him and that it was his responsibility to ‘manage’ himself well.

Well said, Jonathan Frostick.  That is choosing to become the person you want to be and living purposefully—pandemic or no pandemic.

Dan Chalykoff is working toward an M.Ed. in Counselling Psychology and accreditation in Professional Addiction Studies.  He writes these blogs to increase (and share) his own understandings of ideas.  Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery.