Finding harmony

Hari, senior vice president at an MNC, is a successful man but his cynicism pervades his world in countless subtle ways: he attributes goodness to fear and niceness to political motivations. He believes that humans are fundamentally self-serving and he often feels a hostility that he has learned to hide behind a veneer of friendliness. Without knowing it, he has become isolated from humanity, his cynicism a dark veil through which he looks out at the world.

Now, consider Seema, a software engineer. She would like to make friends, but feels shy and inhibited at most social occasions and even when she is with family, she is easily irritated and often sad. She has learned to mask these emotions, hiding behind the persona of a focused, serious engineer. But the truth is that she, too, looks out at the world feeling bereft, alone and isolated.

Hari suffers from what psychologists would call “cynical hostility” and Seema from a “Type D personality” — both personality traits strongly associated with heart attacks.

Emotions are the bedrock of human experience but because rationality and words can never completely describe them, I notice that high achievers have a strange relationship with their emotions — shelving them away, repressing them, suppressing and trivialising them, in pursuit of success.

Hari and Seema are at risk from serious consequences as a result of their emotional turmoil — heart attacks are often a stark reminder of unresolved conflict, one of many consequences of emotional problems. But we do not need to wait for our bodies to remind us that we need to take care of our emotions. We can cultivate moments of stillness and of solitude, where we honour our feelings and let go of things that hurt us. We should do this to heal our bodies and, more importantly, our relationship with the world.